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INSPIRATION 



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THE SCRIPTURES. 



BY THE 

Rev. FRANCIS L. PATTON. 




PHILADELPHIA : 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

No. 821 CHESTNUT STREET. 






.T3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers, Philada. 



PREFACE. 



It is the writer's hope that this attempt 
to indicate the steps by which we are led to 
the sure position that the Scriptures are an 
infallible guide, may aid the faith of some 
who belong to that increasing class of men 
who are disposed to speak with hesitancy 
concerning the divine authorship of the 
Bible. 

Nyack on the Hudson, May 19, 1869. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEK L 

The Scriptures are Trustworthy. 

PAOK 

Introductory — Divine Authority of the Bible an Important Ques- 
tion at the Present Time — Bible a Series of Literary Doc- 
uments — Their Historical Credibility — Authorship of the 
Pentateuch — Profane History Confirmatory of Scripture — 
Rawlinson Quoted — False Theories concerning the Person 
of Christ Refuted by Establishing the Historic Credibility 
of the Gospels — Christianity does not depend on the Doc- 
trine of Inspiration — The Argument a fortiori 9 



CHAPTER II. 

The Bible Contains the Word of God. 

The Scriptures Speak for themselves — No Fallacy in Arguing 
from their Credibility to their Inspiration — Supernatural 
Element in Scripture: (1.) Miracles; (2.) Recital of Divine 
Communications; (3.) Predictions: these not Written after 
the Events Occurred; not Analogous to Heathen Prognos- 
tications; not Instances of Farsighted Sagacity, but Divino 




CONTENTS. 

pa as 
Utterances — hence their Evidential Value; (4.) Doctrines 
which must have been Revealed, as we know (a) from their 
Inherent Excellence, (b) their Adaptation to Human Wants, 
(c) the Mysteriousness of Some, (d) the Apparent Irrecon- 
cilability of Others — Bible Contains the Word of God 24 



CHAPTER III. 

The Whole Bible is God's Message. 

Difference between a True and an Official Account — Bible is an 
Authoritative Expression of God's Will — This shown (1) 
by the Official Rank of the Writers; (2.) The Bible is the 
only Account of the Way of Salvation ; (3.) It is Pervaded 
by one Purpose; (4.) Relation in which the Historical Por- 
tions stand to rest of Scripture; (5.) Direct Testimony of 
Bible 41 



CHAPTER IV. 

Divine Agency Employed in the Composition of 
Scripture. 

Is the Bible a Human or Divine Account of Supernatural Reve- 
lations ? — The fact that the Bible is God's Message raises a 
Presumption in Favor of its Infallibility — This Presump- 
tion sustained by Several Considerations: (1.) Extended 
Account of Divine Communications ; (2.) Marvellous Accu- 
racy of Scripture ; (3.) Motives ascribed to Men and Rea- 
sons assigned for Divine Acts by the Writers of Scripture; 
(4.) Reticence of the Writers and their Wisdom in Selec- 
tion of Facts; (5.) Relations subsisting between the Sev- 
eral Books of the New Testament.. 53 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTEE V. 
Plenary Inspiration. 

PAGE 

Do Scriptures teach Plenary or Partial Inspiration ? — Plenary 
Inspiration of Old Testament proved : (1.) Names applied 
to Old Testament by Writers of the New,* (2.) Deference 
paid to Old Testament* (3.) Its Infallibility asserted by 
the Saviour* (4.) Verbal References to Old Testament* (5.) 
Direct Assertions of Divine Authorship. — Arguments for 
Inspiration of New Testament 72 



CHAPTEE VI. 

Objections Considered. 

Spirit of Controversy at the Present Day Rationalistic — Objec- 
tions to Plenary Inspiration : Obj. 1. Revelation said to be 
Impossible — Objection rests on False Philosophy; Obj. 2. 
Bible said to Contradict Science — Scripture, though not 
Technical, teaches no Error; Obj. 3. Bible said to Contra- 
dict Itself — Conflicting Passages examined; Obj. 4. Un- 
important Passages; Obj. 5 based on 1 Cor. chap. vii. — Lee 
quoted — Proof demanded for Theory of Partial Inspira- 
tion — The Verifying Faculty — Office of Reason in Deter- 
mining what is a Revelation 93 



CHAPTEE VII. 

Explication of the Doctrine. 

(1.) Inspiration covers only the Original MSS. — Importance of 
this Remark — Have we a Correct Text ? — Professor Stuart 
quoted — Difference between an Inspired and Uninspired 
Original. (2.) No Inspiration claimed for Writers of Scrip- 



CONTEXTS. 

PAGS 

ture Outside of their Official "Work — Infallibility as Authors 
did not make them Faultless as Men. . (3.) Agency of 
Spirit in making Sacred Writers Infallible not equivalent 
to his Sanctifying Grace — Confusion arising out of apply- 
ing same name to Both — Mistake of Maurice. (4.) Inspi- 
ration, though Verbal, is not Mechanical — Dr. Bannerman 
Quoted and Reviewed. (5.) There is a Difference Be- 
tween Revelation and Inspiration — Does Inspiration imply 
Revelation ? — Controversy between Dr. Lee and Dr. Ban- 
nerman alluded to — Revelation Defined. (6.) There is a 
Human and & Divine Element in Scripture 112 



THE 

INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SCRIPTURES ARE TRUSTWORTHY. 

THE Bible is the sole warrant for the existence 
of the Christian society. The facts on which 
the Christian system is based, and the doctrines 
which constitute that system, are authoritatively 
recorded nowhere else. 

The members of this society agree in ascribing 
divine honours to Jesus. They trust him as their 
Saviour. They observe religiously the day which 
commemorates his resurrection. They recognize 
obligations which do not fall within the circle of 
duty described by human ethics. They foster hopes 
which can be realized only in a future world. 

If the Bible is not true, they are entertaining be- 
liefs which have not a shadow of support — are 
forming plans in which they must meet with bitter 

9 



10 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

disappointment. The Christian is resting the for- 
tunes of his soul on the authority of the book which 
he calls the Bible. He is contented to settle the 
question of his destiny by complying with the 
directions which are offered him in its pages. 

It cannot, therefore, be a matter of mere literary 
curiosity to inquire into the reasons for receiving 
this book. The thinking Christian must feel a de- 
sire to know why he is required to take it as his 
rule of faith. 

Nor will it do to say that the question concern- 
ing the divine authority of the Bible has been set- 
tled, and there is no need of bringing it up for fresh 
discussion. It is a subject of vital interest at the 
present day. Opposition to the doctrine of the in- 
fallibility of the Scriptures comes from a quarter 
which makes it more injurious in its effects. The 
spirit of Eationalism has invaded the Church, and 
among professing Christians, and even Christian 
ministers, there are only too many who adopt loose 
views on this fundamental question, and give utter- 
ance to sentiments which are seriously damaging to 
the faith of God's people. 

If, as it is claimed, the Bible is the word of God, 
and if the writers in the words they used acted 
under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, it is fair to 



THE SCRIPTURES TRUSTWORTHY. 11 

suppose that the argument can be presented in a 
way which will satisfy the minds of those who are 
inquiring on the subject. If the doctrine of inspi- 
ration is one which claims our faith, there must be 
evidence for it. 

I shall endeavour in the following pages to indi- 
cate the steps by which we are led to a definite 
statement concerning the authorship of the Bible. 
The discussion will take the shape of an inquiry 
rather than a defence. I shall approach the sub- 
ject not as the advocate of any particular theory 
of inspiration, but as one desirous of learning all 
that the Bible can tell me concerning the agency 
employed in its composition. The conclusions 
which are reached will be the result of an inductive 
investigation. 

The Bible comes into the hands of the student 
as a series of literary documents. It would be pre- 
mature at this stage of our inquiries to attach much 
importance to the claim which they make of being 
"a revelation from God. The question of their his- 
toric credibility must first be settled according to 
the rules of historical criticism. It is fair for the 
inquirer to ask whether these documents are reli- 
able. Can we trust them as the vehicles of histori- 
cal information? Is the Pentateuch, for example, 



12 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

the production of its reputed author, or is it a 
forgery which was palmed upon the Hebrew people? 
These are questions of vital importance. The dis- 
cussion of them belongs to the department of the- 
ology known as Introduction. The reader must 
refer to the works of such writers as Home, Hav- 
enrick, John Rawlinson, etc., if he wishes to see 
how the arguments of those who assail the credi- 
bility of the Scriptures have been met, and how 
completely the Bible has been vindicated. 

Little more is possible here than the statement 
that the books of the Old and New Testaments 
have been subjected to the most thorough critical 
handling, and that their credibility as historic doc- 
uments has been placed beyond dispute. Better 
evidence of their authenticity we could not have 
than is furnished in the fact that they have passed 
safely through the ordeal of German criticism. 

No objection has been raised against the genuine- 
ness and authenticity of the Pentateuch sufficiently 
grave to outweigh the testimony of the entire Jew- 
ish nation. The study of the Old Testament will 
show that the Jews as early as the reign of David 
were confident that Moses wrote the first five books 
of the Scriptures. So deeply was this conviction 
rooted in the national mind that political differ- 



THE SCRIPTURES TRUSTWORTHY. 13 

ences, even when they culminated in schisms, were 
not strong enough to induce either party to cast 
discredit on the books which bear the name of their 
lawgiver. Though the Pentateuch was the statute- 
book of Judah, the ten tribes showed no disposi- 
tion to set aside its authority, as we learn from the 
fact that the Samaritans received it alone of all the 
Old Testament Scriptures, because it was the book 
of the Law given by Moses. It has, indeed, been 
alleged that writing was not known in the time of 
Moses, or, if known, that writing materials were 
not at hand adapted for so large a work under the 
circumstances of a wilderness journey. This objec- 
tion, however, has been set aside by recent discov- 
eries of Babylonian bricks and Egyptian papyruses, 
which are estimated to be coeval with Moses. " It 
has been said that if Moses had written the book, 
he would not have spoken of himself in the third 
person, and that he would not have applied to 
himself terms of praise and expressions of honour."* 
To which it is enough to reply by saying that par- 
allel passages may be cited from the writings of 
Homer and Chaucer, of Csesar and Xenophon, and 
even of the Apostle Paul. These are considera- 
tions which abundantly confirm the testimony of 
* Kawlinson's Historical Evidences, p. 52. 



14 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

the Hebrew people. That a deliberate forgery 
could have won the confidence of the nation so as 
to have been regarded by them in the light of a 
sacred trust, embodying their history, their geneal- 
ogies, their laws and their religious institutions, is 
a supposition which cannot be entertained. Yet 
the book must have been written by Moses, or be 
the work of an impostor. That Moses was the 
author of the books attributed to him is evident 
from the fact that they were written by one who 
was an eye-witness of most of the events recorded. 
The careful attention which the writer bestows 
upon the record of places, battles, marches, etc., the 
minute circumstances which he weaves into the nar- 
rative, corroborate the belief that he was a partici- 
pator in the transactions, and that he wrote from 
personal knowledge. 

The books were evidently written while the 
events were in progress. There is no systematic 
division of the material into subjects, as would be 
the case to a greater or less extent with a historian 
writing from reflection or crystallizing floating tra- 
ditions. Historical facts, laws, admonitions follow 
each other without any other relation than that of 
chronological sequence. They were written in the 
form of a journal, and by one who knew whereof 



THE SCRIPTURES TRUSTWORTHY, 15 

he affirmed. The use of archaic forms of expression 
and of words of Egyptian origin, the allusions to 
the government and social life of the Egyptians — 
particularly the mention of their practice of em- 
balming the dead — prove that the writer must have 
lived in a time as early as Moses, and must have 
enjoyed a familiarity with foreign customs which is 
best explained by the circumstances attending the 
education and early life of the Jewish lawgiver. 
Finally, the distinct declarations that God com- 
manded Moses to write the discomfiture of Amalek 
in a book — that Moses wrote all the words of the 
Law, and took the book of the covenant and read it 
in the audience of the people — that he made an end 
of writing the words of the Law in a book till they 
were finished, and bade the Levites who bare the 
ark of the covenant take that book of the Law and 
put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the 
Lord, that it might be there for a witness against 
the people — leave no room for doubt that Moses 
was the author of the books which bear his 
name. This, it is conceded by our opponents, is 
enough to settle the veracity of the narrative. 
" It would most unquestionably," says Strauss, 
11 be an argument of decisive weight in favour 
of the credibility of the biblical history could 



16 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, 

it indeed be shown that it was written by eye- 
witnesses."* 

The historical books which follow, though of 
uncertain authorship are nevertheless, authentic, as 
both internal and external evidence abundantly 
testify. They have the " force of state papers, be- 
ing the authoritative public documents, preserved 
among the national archives of the Jews, so long 
as they were a nation ; and ever since cherished by 
the scattered fragments of the race as among the 
most precious of their early records. "f 

We are, however, more than compensated for 
their anonymous character by the abundant cor- 
roborative testimony which these books receive from 
other portions of Scripture and from profane sources. 
Kings and Chronicles are independent records, and, 
so far as they cover common ground, serve to sub- 
stantiate each other. The historical books of the 
Old Testament receive an endorsement in the writ- 
ings of the prophets analogous to that which the 
book of Acts receives in the Epistles of Paul. The 
reader may verify this by comparing the prophecies 
of Isaiah with the second book of Kings — for ex- 
ample, the accounts of the sickness of Hezekiah 

* Quoted by Rawlinson, Hist'l. Ev. p. 57. 
f Rawlinson, p. 80. 



THE SCRIPTURES TRUSTWORTHY. 17 

and the death of Sennacherib (Isa. xxxvii. 8 ; 2 
Kings xix. 20). Recent antiquarian and historical 
studies have thrown light upon the Scriptures. The 
" giant cities of Bashan " of which Moses tells us, 
no longer afford opportunity for a jest at the ex- 
pense of Scripture. They still exist, the silent 
but enduring monuments to the veracity of the He- 
brew historian.* Scientific inquiries confirm the 
Bible accounts of the creation, the origin of man, the 
unity of the race and the ethnic relations of man- 
kind. " The Toldoth Beni Noah" says Rawlinson, 
" has extorted the admiration of modern ethnologists 
who continually find in it anticipations of their 
greatest discoveries." Archaeological researches in 
Nineveh and Babylon illustrate the state of art in 
the age of Solomon among the nations contiguous 
to the Jews, and among other things remove the 

* " At least a thousand square miles of Og's ancient kingdom 
were spread out before me. There was the country whose giant 
(Rephaim, Gen xiv.) inhabitants the Eastern kings smote before 
they descended into the plains of Sodom. There were those 
threescore great cities of Argob whose walls and gates and 
brazen bars were noted with surprise by Moses and the Israel- 
ites, and whose Cyclopean architecture and massive stone gates 
even now fill the Western traveller with amazement, and give 
his simplest descriptions much of the charm and strangeness 
of Komance." — Porter'' s Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 30. 
2 



18 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

difficulty which the modern reader experiences in 
the Scripture account of the lavish use of gold for 
purposes of ornamentation, by showing that this 
was in accordance with the customs of the age.* 

The Scripture accounts of the Assyrian mon- 
archs who played an important part in the history 
of the Jews have in great measure been confirmed 
by Assyrian records. Of this a good illustration 
is the account of the invasion of Sennacherib, 
which we find minutely recorded in his annals as 
well as in the Bible. Assyrian monuments have 
come to the aid of the Christian student, and have 
reconciled the seeming contradiction between Daniel 
and Berosus, by giving a royal title to Belshazzar.f 

Rawlinson thus sums up the result of the in- 

* Rawlinson's Historical Evidences, p. 71. 

f The account of the capture of Babylon by the Persians 
used to be cited as one of the cases where Scripture contradicts 
profane history. According to Daniel, the king Belshazzar was 
killed at the taking of Babylon. According to Berosus, the 
king Nabonadius was absent from the city at the time of its 
capture, and was afterward treated ivith clemency. A double 
contradiction ! It was only in 1854 that Sir H. Rawlinson 
solved this difficulty by the discovery that Nabonadius had a 
son named Bil-sha-mozer (Belshazzar), who had been associated 
with him in the government, and who shared the royal title. 
See Rawlinson, p. 139, and note p. 353. 



THE SCRIPTURES TRUSTWORTHY. 19 

vestigations which concern the authenticity of the 
Old Testament : " It has, I believe, been shown, in 
the first place, that the sacred narrative itself is the 
production of eye-witnesses, and therefore that it 
is entitled to the acceptance of all those who regard 
contemporary testimony as the main ground of all 
authentic history. And it has, secondly, been made 
apparent that all the evidence w T hich we possess 
from profane sources of a really important and 
trustworthy character tends to confirm the truth 
of the history delivered to us in the sacred volume. 
The monumental records of past ages, Assyrian, 
Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Phoenician — the 
writings of historians who had based their histories 
on contemporary annals, as Manetho, Berosus, 
Dius, Menander, Nicolas of Damascus — the de- 
scriptions given by eye-witnesses of the Oriental 
manners and customs — the proofs obtained by 
modern research of the condition of art in the 
time and country — all combine to confirm, illustrate 
and establish the veracity of the writers who have 
delivered to us in the Pentateuch, in Joshua, 
Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, Ezra, 
Esther and Nehemiah, the history of the chosen 
people." 

The students of Scripture have been equally sue- 



20 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

cessful in vindicating the historical credibility of 
the several books of the New Testament. What 
has been said will be sufficient to indicate the prin- 
ciples which guide investigation on this subject. 

Before we prosecute our inquiries farther, let us 
notice the great advantage we have already gained. 
Take, for illustration, the case of the four evange- 
gelists. If it can be established that the Gospels 
were written by those whose names they bear, it 
will be impossible to evade the statements which we 
find in them. It will not do to resort to imposture 
on the part of either Christ or his apostles in ex- 
planation of Christianity. The theory that the 
world has been duped and Judaism overthrown by 
a Galilean impostor never had plausibility enough 
to gain credence. The statement of the hypothesis 
that the disciples renounced their educational be- 
liefs, and went forth to die in the attempt to propa- 
gate a deception, is its best refutation. 

Equally unsatisfactory is the supposition that the 
men who for three years were the companions of 
Jesus could have been deceived when such abun- 
dant opportunities w r ere afforded them of testing 
his claim to divine commission. The theory of 
imposture and of self-deception have both been tried 
and found wanting, and the enemies of Christianity 



THE SCRIPTURES TRUSTWORTHY. 21 

have attempted to destroy the credibility of the 
Gospels by fixing on the second or third century as 
the time of their composition. But the legendary 
hypothesis cannot stand the test of historical critic- 
ism. It has been proved by an array of patristic 
testimony that the Gospels in their present form 
were read, quoted and received as authoritative by 
the Church early in the second century. In other 
words, we are left without the shadow of a doubt 
that these writings are the productions of their re- 
puted authors. 

This being the case, it follows that the character 
portrayed by the evangelists is that of a real man ; 
that Jesus uttered the words attributed to him ; 
that he gave signal proofs of his divinity, and 
wrought miracles in attestation of his divine com- 
mission. We learn, moreover, that the books of 
the Old Testament — held sacred by the Jews from 
time immemorial, though containing the record of 
their national crimes — were authoritatively en- 
dorsed by the Son of God. So when the credibility 
of the book of Acts is established, we prove that 
the apostles agreed in recognizing Jesus as the Mes- 
siah, and that they went forth amid dangers to 
preach the doctrine of the Resurrection ; nay, that 
in Jerusalem, the very place where the enmity of 



22 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

the human heart had curdled into Pharisaic spite, 
they proclaimed that the "same Jesus, whom by 
wicked hands they had crucified and slain, God 
had raised from the dead." 

If we could do no more than establish the his- 
torical credibility of the Bible, there would be evi- 
dence sufficient to condemn those who refuse to be- 
lieve it. I must take exception to the disposition 
on the part of some to stake the fortunes of Chris- 
tianity on the doctrine of Inspiration. Not that I 
yield to anyone in profound conviction of the truth 
and importance of this doctrine. But it is proper 
for us to bear in mind the immense argumentative 
advantage which Christianity has, aside altogether 
from the inspiration of the documents on which it 
rests. I cannot agree with a recent writer when he 
says : i( If we take away the inspired character of 
the Scripture narrative, we really shall possess little 
more certainty with regard to the facts of our Lord's 
life than w T e do to the facts of ancient Roman his- 
tory. That this is not too strong a statement of the 
case is shown in the results of denying the inspired 
authority of the evangelists, as illustrated in ro- 
mances which Strauss and Renan have proposed to 
substitute for the sacred history."* 

* Garbetl, God's Word Written, p. 330. 



THE SCRIPTURES TRUSTWORTHY. 23 

This passage, though occurring in a very able 
treatise on the subject of Inspiration, I cannot but 
look upon as too great a concession to the cause of 
Rationalism. The Christian apologist cannot meet 
infidel objections by assuming the doctrine of In- 
spiration. While the question of historical credi- 
bility is at issue, the battle must be fought on the 
ground of historical evidence. The romances of 
Strauss and Renan are triumphantly answered by 
proving the early origin of the Gospels. The Chris- 
tian minister and apologist must never deprive him- 
self of the argument a fortiori which is furnished 
him in the study of the Scriptures. 

If on simple historical testimony it can be 
proved that Jesus wrought miracles, uttered pro- 
phecies and proclaimed his divinity — if it can be 
shown that he was crucified to redeem sinners, that 
lie rose again from the dead, and that he made the 
destiny of men to hinge on their acceptance of 
him as their Saviour — then, whether the records 
which contain these truths be inspired or not, w T oe 
unto him who " neglects so great salvation !" 



CHAPTER II. 

THE BIBLE CONTAINS THE WORD OF GOD. 

HAVING reached the position that the Scrip- 
tures are reliable, we are prepared to admit 
their testimony concerning themselves. They are 
competent witnesses concerning their own origin ; 
and there is no fallacy involved in arguing from 
the credibility of the Bible to its inspiration. An 
objection is sometimes put in this form: "You 
must believe that the Bible is true before you can 
accept its testimony concerning its inspiration ; and 
you must know that it is inspired before you can 
rely upon its statements. A circle evidently !" 
The difficulty is easily removed. Ordinary his- 
torical evidence is sufficient to satisfy us with re- 
gard to the truthfulness of statements which we 
find in the writings of Tacitus, Caesar, Grote, Gib- 
bon and Macaulay. We do not insist upon in- 
spiration on the part of these authors as a guaran- 
tee of their credibility. Their books may contain 
errors. Instances of false reasoning, hasty gener- 

24 



THEY CONTAIN THE WORD OF GOD. 25 

alization, incorrect judgment may occur in their 
pages, but of their general truthfulness we have no 
doubt. Historical criticism places the Bible on a 
level with the most reliable human histories. If, 
on after study, we find that the style in which the 
Scriptures are written, the information they con- 
tain, the harmony which pervades them indicate 
that supernatural agency was employed in their 
composition; if, moreover, the writers claim to 
have been guided by divine wisdom ; if, by their 
references to the several books of the Bible, they 
indicate their conviction that the words of Scrip- 
ture are the words of God, — then we are able to 
draw an inference far in advance of the general 
credibility of the Bible. We prove that, owing to 
the divine agency employed in its composition, it 
must be free from all mistakes incident to merely 
human authorship — that it can contain no errors 
in judgment, no inaccuracies in doctrinal statement. 
In short, from its credibility as a literary docu- 
ment we advance to its infallibility as God's mes- 
sage to men for the guidance of life. 

At the threshold of our investigations into the 
contents of Scripture we are brought face to face 
with the supernatural. The Bible contains the 
account of God's miraculous presence in the affairs 



26 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

of human history; and this account is so closely 
woven into the texture of Scripture that its truth- 
fulness cannot be invalidated without overthrow- 
ing all historical testimony. So that, whether the 
Bible is a supernatural production or not, it cer- 
tainly does constitute in its main features a record 
of divine communications. 

To illustrate this idea is the object of the present 
chapter. 

(1.) The Bible contains the account of miracles. 

AVe cannot deal with the miracles of Scripture 
as with the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, 
for the simple reason that instead of being the 
legends of a pre-historic age, they are matters of 
sober, well-authenticated fact, and constitute a 
very important part of the historic life of the 
Hebrew T people. To show this, it is enough to 
mention the miracles which attested the divine 
commission of Moses and of his successors. Be- 
ginning with the plagues, we have the destruction 
of the first-born in Egypt, the passage of the Red 
Sea, the quails, the manna, the leprosy of Miriam, 
the judgment of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, the 
blossoming of Aaron's rod, the smiting of the rock 
at Meribah, the brazen serpent. 

Then the passage of the Jordan, the destruction 



THEY CONTAIN THE WORD OF GOD. 27 

of Jericho, the defeat of the Gibeonites. Later 
still, the accounts of Elijah fed by ravens, the 
widow's cruse, Elijah's translation, the Shunamite's 
child, the cure of Naaman. And finally we have 
the well-authenticated accounts of the miracles of 
our Lord and his apostles. 

We cannot separate miracles from their historical 
associations. The Bible presents the supernatural 
in the sphere of historical relations, and subjects it 
to the test of historical criticism. And the study 
of the Scriptures impresses upon us the conviction 
that the history which it embodies is a miraculous 
history — a history which has been shaped by divine 
agency. 

(2.) Many passages in the Bible claim to be the 
recital of divine communications. 

It is not strange that men whose ideas of history 
are cast in the mould of a naturalistic philosophy 
should try to break down the credibility of the 
Bible ; for it contains a history in which the visi- 
ble appearance of the divine Being and the audible 
utterance of divine communications are cardinal 
facts. Every institution which is characteristic of 
the Jewish people is wedded to the supernatural. 
Take, for example, the account of God's appearance 
to Moses when he kept the flocks of Jethro in 



28 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, 

Horeb, of Moses' appointment to the leadership of 
Israel, of the institution of the Passover, of the de- 
liverance of the Law in Sinai. These are salient 
points in Hebrew history, but they are linked with 
the utterance of divine communications. The Le- 
vitical code is the axis on which the civil, social 
and religious life of the Jews revolves, but it too 
came from the lips of Jehovah. The minute in- 
structions concerning the ark, the altar, the taber- 
nacle, the sacred vestments, the Urim and Thum- 
mim, the anointing oil, the consecration of the 
priests, were oral communications addressed to 
Moses. The laws concerning the sin, meat, burnt 
and trespass-offerings, the feast of tabernacles and 
the year of jubilee, find their explanation in the 
opening verse of the twentieth chapter of Exodus : 
"And God spake all these words." 

The successor of Moses conducted his adminis- 
tration under the oral instructions of Jehovah. 
He crossed the Jordan, besieged Jericho, took Ai, 
divided the land, appointed cities of refuge, in ac- 
cordance with divine direction. 

The solemn preface with which the prophet 
always announced his message proves that he acted 
as the mouthpiece of God. Thus we read : "The 
word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning 



THEY CONTAIN THE WORD OF GOD. 29 

Jadah and Jerusalem ;" " Thus saith the Lord ;" 
"The word that came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, 
saying ;" " Hear ye the word which the Lord 
speaketh to you, O house of Israel;" "And the 
word of the Lord came unto me saying, Son of 
man;" "'Also, thou son of man, thus saith the 
Lord God unto the land of Israel," etc. 

It is evident that if we should take out of Scrip- 
ture all those portions which claim to relate what 
God said, we should rob the Bible of a large part 
of its contents. And if we should set aside all the 
historical facts which depend upon the oral utter- 
ances of God for their explanation, very little would 
be left worth calling history at all. 

(3.) The Bible contains predictions, together with 
the record of their fulfilment. 

God holds the key which unlocks the secrets of 
the centuries to come. We cannot dip into the 
future. The keenest foresight will not enable a 
man to write the history of the next year in ad- 
vance. The elements which enter into the life of 
a nation are too numerous, the causes which operate 
on communities are too subtle, the motives which 
influence human conduct too inscrutable, for history 
ever to become a matter of prevision. The human 
will is an effectual barrier to the ambition of those 



30 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

who would carry scientific induction into the sphere 
of mind and make history a matter of calculation. 
Whatever may be the solution of the great question 
of the ages regarding the will, certain it is that so 
far as man is concerned the future must always be 
contingent, since the human spirit is either free, or 
the secret of its action is hid with Him who gave 
it being. Hence the predictive element of Scrip- 
ture has always and deservedly held a position of 
high evidential importance. This element is a 
marked feature of the Bible. The destruction of 
Sennacherib, the death of Jezebel, the recovery of 
Hezekiah, the Babylonish captivity, the desola- 
tion of Edom, the fall of Babylon, the humb- 
ling of Egypt, the coming of the Messiah, the 
destruction of Jerusalem, are instances of fulfilled 
predictions which confront the denier of the super- 
natural. 

It would be an easy way of disposing of these 
troublesome facts if the opponents of Revelation 
could say of them all, as of some they have the 
effrontery to say, that the so-called predictions were 
not written till the corresponding events had oc- 
curred. But God has taken care to put us in pos- 
session of evidence that the greater portion of the 
prophetic series was on record at the time of the 



THEY CONTAIN THE WORD OF GOD. 31 

Babylonish captivity, and that therefore the predic- 
tions which concern Edom, Moab, the Philistines, 
Egypt, Babylon and the coming of Christ, antedate 
by centuries the events which constitute their ac- 
complishment. 

Nor is the cause of Rationalism helped by the 
appeal which is sometimes made to two or three 
cases of heathen prognostications. The saying of 
Seneca,* that the time would come when Shetland 
would cease to be the boundary of the known 
world, is adduced sometimes as a parallel to the 
prophecies of Scripture. As if the vague guesses 
of heathenism were at all analogous to the collec- 
tion of definite predictions which we find in the 
Bible ! The reader must remember that the con- 
trast between Bible predictions and heathen oracles 
is not alone in the fact that the former are more 
discriminating and unambiguous, but also that 
instead of consisting of sporadic cases of prog- 
nostication, they constitute a collective series. 
" The evidence of prophecy," says Fairbairn, " is 
essentially of a connective and cumulative charac- 
ter. It does not consist so much in the verifica- 
tions given to a few remarkable predictions, as in 
the establishment of an entire series closely related 

* See Fairbairn on Prophecy, p. 207, American edition. 



32 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

to each other, and forming a united and compre- 
hensive whole." * 

Let the reader study the series of prophetic ut- 
terances concerning the Jewish people and the 
neighbouring nations ; and ask himself whether 
the circumstantial verifications of them are to be 
flippantly disposed of as illustrations of conjectures 
" extraordinarily felicitous." 

Turn again to the predictions relating to the 
coming of Christ, which date from Paradise, and 
crowd the pages of the later prophets. With 
growing distinctness as the time of the Advent 
approached we find him described. He was to 
be of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, 
of the house of David — was to be born of a virgin, 
in the town of Bethlehem. He was to combine 
the attributes of God and man. He was to be at 
once a King and a servant — a man of sorrows and 
the Prince of Peace. Are these predictions, which 
find such complete fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth, 
to be explained as a series of fortunate conjectures ? 
Or if, with some, we say that the prophecies 
concerning the Messiah are only expressions 
of the longings of the Hebrew people is it a 
matter of accident that they took a shape which 
* Fairbairn on Prophecy, p. 206, American edition. 



THEY CONTAIN THE WORD OF GOD. 33 

found such wonderful realization in the person of 
Jesus ? 

Surely, in attempting to eliminate the super- 
natural from Scripture men are obliged to resort 
to explanations which are far stranger than mir- 
acles, and in leaving the domain of faith they 
become the victims of credulity ! 

Equally unsuccessful, though in advance of the 
views just alluded to, is the hypothesis which ac- 
counts for the predictions of the Bible by attribut- 
ing to the writers a very far-sighted sagacity. 
The advocates of this view refer us to the antici- 
pations of scientific discovery in the Organon of 
Bacon, to the soul of Columbus " burdened with a 
material vision," to Wickliffe, Luther and Knox, 
who "in prophetic" vision saw the great futurity 
of Protestantism which was to shake the founda- 
tion of the civilized world.* 

Will any one pretend that these are analogous 
to the predictions of the Bible? There maybe 
causes now at work the development of which in 
the proximate future we may predict with tolerable 
accuracy. The tendency of current events may in 
some instances be so obvious that we can safely 
form a judgment concerning the issue. But is 
* Quoted by Fairbairn, Prophecy, p. 217. 



34 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

this equivalent to the utterance of prophecy con- 
cerning a remote future, and with reference to 
events which are not hinted at by anything in the 
present ? 

We may be safe in predicting in a general way 
great advance in scientific knowledge during the 
coming years. "That which men have done is but 
earnest of the things that they shall do." But 
what if the vision of the poet shall be realized, 
who 

"Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic 

sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly 

bales ; 
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a 

ghastly dew 
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central 

blue." 

Should we then number Tennyson among the 
prophets, and put these lines on a level with the 
predictions of Isaiah ? 

The prophecies of Scripture cannot be used as 
illustrations of political sagacity or scientific dis- 
cernment. They do not consist of judgments con- 
cerning the issue of events in progress at the time 
of their utterance. They are distinct, discriminate 



1 



THEY CONTAIN THE WORD OF GOD. 35 

ing, detailed predictions concerning events which 
could not have been suggested by anything which 
addressed itself to the observation of the keenest 
vision. Only an eye lit with heavenly brightness 
could see the shadow of the doom which was to 
overtake Tyre, "the crowning city, whose mer- 
chants were princes, and whose traffickers the hon- 
ourable of the earth." Only when the divine hand 
had removed the veil which hid the future, could 
the prophet see the destruction which in coming 
years was to fall upon the proud, brazen-gated 
Babylon. 

(4.) Doctrines are taught in Scripture which must 
have come from God. 

We know that the doctrines of the Bible have 
God's sanction. For what is Hebrew history but 
a long lesson in monotheism ? What were the 
bondage in Egypt, the wilderness journey, the 
Sinaitic legislation, the Babylonish captivity, but 
parts of an education designed to drill the Jews in 
the doctrine of God's unity and to teach them the 
meaning of true spiritual worship? What was the 
sacrificial system but a divine exposition of the 
doctrine of guilt? In like maimer the doctrines 
peculiar to or more fully developed in the Christian 
system were, as we learn from Paul, matters of 



36 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

direct revelation. The trinity, the sacrifice of 
Christ, the work of the Spirit, justification by faith, 
the resurrection, the judgment, eternal retribution, 
were all inculcated, at least germinally, in the dis- 
courses of our Lord himself. 

I wish, however, to draw attention to the fact 
that these doctrines not only were, but must have been, 
divinely revealed. They are stamped with the 
divine image and superscription. Their inherent 
excellence witnesses to their heavenly origin. The 
Bible representation of God is unique. Equally 
removed from the superstition which peopled hill 
and dale with deities, and the skepticisms which 
locked the universe in the arms of fate, it teaches 
of one ever-present, overruling Spirit. Excluding, 
on the one hand, the view which makes God only 
an exaggerated man and which clothes him in the 
imperfections of humanity, and on the other the 
Pantheism which strips him of his personality, it 
teaches us of a Person who is clothed in infinite 
perfections — whose attributes of holiness, of justice 
and of love are the prototypes of all that is noble 
in man, and in whose image man was created. It 
reveals to us a God at once a Sovereign and a 
Father; a God who satisfies our instincts of obli- 
gation and dependence; a God in whose nature 



THEY CONTAIN THE WORD OF GOB. 37 

blend the attributes of justice and of mercy — who 
manifests the one in his supreme regard for the 
majesty of law, w r hile he exhibits the other in em- 
barking the resources of Omnipotence in the work 
of man's redemption. The Bible conception of 
God, we may safely say, never could have originated 
in a human brain. The originality of Christ's 
character has been made use of, of late, as an argu- 
ment for his divinity, and it is a strong one. A 
character which has w T on the admiration of the 
w r orld, ideally perfect, though contrary to all ante- 
cedent ideals, cannot be a human invention. The 
same may be said of the code of Christian ethics. 
A system which commands the world's homage, 
though in open contradiction to the world's prac- 
tice; which makes faith, not merit, the ground of 
divine acceptance — self-sacrifice, not selfishness, the 
rule of Christian living; which prescribes love 
rather than hate, forgiveness rather than resent- 
ment, endurance rather than revenge ; which tells 
us that humility is better than ambition, philan- 
thropy than conquest, — a system at once so grand 
and so far beyond the compass of heathen thought, 
must have come from God. The Christian system 
meets the wants of the race, and this corroborates 
its claim to be a divine revelation. The Bible 



38 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

brings to light the deep things and the secret things 
of man's spiritual nature. It is the interpreter of 
the conscience. It expounds man's sense of guilt, 
and throws light upon the instinct which prompts 
him to pray and offer sacrifice. It explains his 
dissatisfaction with all that is earthly by widening 
the field of his vision and disclosing the glories of 
a better land. And while it affirms the judgments 
of the conscience concerning his sin and destiny, it 
also gives him solid ground for his hopes by assur- 
ing him that the blood of Jesus has been spilled in 
expiation of his guilt, and that the love of the tri- 
personal God has been enlisted for his recovery. 

Nor does the mysteriousness of some of the doc- 
trines at all shake our faith in their divinity ; it 
rather strengthens it; for it may be taken for 
granted that what has originated in a human mind 
is not beyond human comprehension. By dint of 
persevering study, men are able to get to the bot- 
tom of what Plato or Shakespeare has said, but no 
human mind can fathom the depths or explore the 
secrets of the Bible doctrines of the Trinity and the 
Incarnation. The fact that the learning and indus- 
try of nineteen Christian centuries have been ex- 
pended on the investigation of these doctrines with 
out exhausting their meaning or divesting them of 



THEY CONTAIN THE WORD OF GOD, 39 

mystery, is very good reason for our believing them 
to be divine. Nay, the very doctrines which are 
sometimes used as arguments against the Bible may 
be fairly employed in its defence, and in the fact 
that they conflict with each other we may find a con- 
firmation of their claims. Predestination and free 
agency are alike taught in the Bible. They per- 
vade the sacred volume. They are both empha- 
sized. They are both insisted on by the same 
writers. They follow hard upon each other in 
the same chapter. And yet no human mind 
can reduce them to unity. It is easy to construct 
a consistent system on either doctrine alone, and 
systems of this one-sided kind have been built. 
We may build on God's sovereignty as a founda- 
tion, and fatalism is the result. We may build on 
man's freedom as a foundation, and Pelagianism is 
the result. The Bible system, however, is that 
which recognizes both truths, and concedes their 
irreconcilability because they transcend human 
comprehension. But is it supposable that a system 
which incorporates two elements so obviously in- 
compatible, so far as our reason is concerned, could 
have originated with man ? Would doctrines which 
have tasked the faith of Christians in all ages ever 
have suggested themselves to a human speculator as 



40 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

true? Would a writer of Paul's learning and pen 
etration have failed to see that these two ideas, whicl 
he insists upon in his Epistles, are, to all human 
appearance, in open conflict? And could he ever 
have persuaded himself that they were true, or have 
spoken so confidently concerning them, if his faith 
had not rested on the authority of divine revela- 
tion ? To the candid mind there can be but one 
answer to these questions. Divine authority alone 
could have overcome the protest which reason would 
have raised against the apparent discrepancy of 
these doctrines. We can account for their exist- 
ence in Scripture only on the supposition that they 
came from God, and that the discrepancies disap- 
pear in a unity which is above us and out of sight. 
We shall learn by further inquiry whether the 
Bible gives us a human version of divine revela- 
tions, or whether the record itself is a divine pro- 
duction. In the mean time, let us mark the progress 
we have made in this chapter by adopting the for- 
mula of a theory of partial inspiration.* The 
Bible contains the Word of God. 

* The distinction between the Bible and the Word of God 
was first brought into prominence by Tollner, about the raid- 
die of last century. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, Ameri- 
can edition, vol. ii. p. 466. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE WHOLE BIBLE IS GOD'S MESSAGE. 

WE were led in our last chapter to a very im- 
portant conclusion. A survey of Scripture 
teaches us that our religion is throughout a reve- 
lation from God. The object of our faith is God 
manifest in the flesh. The doctrines which con- 
stitute our creed came from God, and are attested 
by the most marked manifestations of the divine 
presence and power ; so that the Christian has a 
right to feel the most unshaken confidence in his 
religion. This conclusion will now aid us in es- 
tablishing the authoritative character of the Scrip- 
tures. The next question of an inquirer would be, 
" Does the Bible contain the authoritative and, so to 
speak, the official account of God's revelation ?" 
The question does not imply that any suspicion 
exists with regard to the truthfulness of the ac- 
count. We have reached the position which 
makes any such suspicion impossible, not to say 
illogical. But a true account is one thing, and an 

41 



42 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

official another. Macaulay's history is true, but it 
is different from the State papers from which he 
derived his information. The question I have 
raised has a very important bearing on the subject 
of inspiration. For if it can be shown that the 
Bible was meant to be the authoritative account of 
a plan of salvation, the very strongest presumption 
will be afforded for its infallibility. Did God in- 
tend, we may suppose an inquirer to ask, that the 
accounts of the miracles, divine utterances, pro- 
phecies, doctrines which we find in the Scripture 
should be put on record for the use of coming gen- 
erations, and do the records which we have carry 
his sanction ? Do we know that the writers of 
Scripture were authorized to write the books of 
the canon? The official rank of most of the writ- 
ers is enough to give the weight of authority to 
what they wrote. Moses was the accredited leader 
of God's people; he wrought miracles in proof 
of his divine commission ; enjoyed face to face 
interviews with Deity ; received oral instructions 
concerning the institutions embodied in his history. 
Do we need proof that Moses' writings had the 
divine sanction, when his whole public life brought 
him into official relations with God ? When the 
prophets uttered their messages under divine in- 



THE WHOLE BIBLE IS GOD'S MESSAGE. 43 

spiration, it can hardly be denied that their pro- 
phecies were no less authoritative because put into 
a written form. They did not lose their divine 
sanction by being put on record. Nor is it neces- 
sary for us to have evidence for the authoritative 
character of the apostolic writings beyond the com- 
mission given to the apostles to preach, teach, or- 
ganize the Church and administer its affairs. The 
divine sanction which adhered to their preaching 
and administration may be fairly taken as primd 
facie evidence in behalf of the authority of their 
writings. 

Let us look after the question in another light. 
The great idea of the Bible is redemption. Every- 
thing in Scripture crystallizes round the person of 
Christ. The burden of the volume is salvation by 
faith. A gospel for the world, a gospel for all 
time, a gospel whose benefits to be enjoyed must 
be known — this is the teaching of Scripture. It 
reveals a gospel which contemplates propagation. 
The telling of it is not an accident, and therefore a 
matter unprovided for. It exists to be told. It 
was given to be preached. The inference is 
natural, therefore, that the gospel to be world-wide 
must be written. 

The case stands thus. The Bible either contains 



44 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

an authoritative account of the Gospel, or we have 
a religion divinely revealed, with no divine care 
for its preservation — a religion meant to be uni- 
versal with no provision for its perpetuation. We 
must receive the Bible as containing an official ac- 
count of God's will, or express our obligation to 
the writers of Scripture for the literary impulse 
w T hich prompted them to put on record the facts on 
the preservation of which the hopes of the w 7 orld 
depended. 

To my mind one of the best evidences that the 
Bible is a revelation from God is that it is a 
revelation of God. 

Further. The doctrine of the Incarnation, as 
has been already intimated, unifies the Bible. The 
sacrifice of Christ is the key to the Jew T ish ritual. 
The advent of the Messiah is the fulfilment of pro- 
phecy. The Bible without Christ is a riddle ; the 
Bible interpreted with Calvary in view is the un- 
folding of a single plan. Throughout the volume 
the same " increasing purpose runs." The convic- 
tion grow T s upon the mind, w 7 ith increased study of 
the Scriptures, that they w T ere meant to exhibit the 
progressive development of a scheme of grace w r hich 
culminated in the gift of Jesus and the offer of sal- 
vation to all who believe in his name. And this 



THE WHOLE BIBLE IS GOD'S MESSAGE. 45 

question addresses itself to our judgment, Is it pos- 
sible that writers who were separated by the lapse 
of centuries, and who were actuated only by the 
ordinary motives which prompt to literary compo- 
sition, could have produced a series of books which 
would constitute the complete and congruous sys- 
tem of truth which we find in the Bible ? 

But it may be said that some of the historical 
portions of the Bible contain information which was 
within easy reach of an ordinary historian. The 
books of Kings and Chronicles and the Acts of the 
Apostles, for instance, might easily have been w T rit- 
ten by men who had access to the ordinary avenues 
of knowledge. It would be anticipating what I 
shall have to say when I speak more particularly 
of the proofs of plenary inspiration, to deny this 
assertion here. I shall admit the propriety of the 
question which is based on it, How do we know 
that these historical events of Scripture were in- 
tended to form part of a divine message ? And the 
answer is, Because of the relations in which they 
stand to other portions of Scripture. 

It is a peculiarity of the Christian religion that 
history is made the channel of communicating su- 
pernatural truth. The doctrines all have an histor- 
ical setting. Prophecy and history are so corre- 



46 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

lated that they illustrate and confirm each other. 
The historical portions of the Bible are written 
with such evident reference to the illustration of a 
single scheme, are so plainly subordinate to and in 
harmony with the great idea of Redemption, that 
we should be warranted in placing them on a level 
with the strictly prophetic or doctrinal books, 
though direct Scripture testimony on the point 
were wanting. It is impossible that authors, act- 
ing without concert, on their individual responsi- 
bility, could have produced a series of writings so 
wonderfully corroborative of those portions of 
Scripture which are avowedly the records of divine 
communications. 

But the Scriptures themselves are far from being 
silent on the question before us. They intimate 
very clearly that all the parts of the Bible stand on 
the same level in point of authority, and together 
constitute a divine message. There are passages 
which intimate that portions of Scripture at least 
were written by direct command. Thus, concern- 
ing the discomfiture of Amalek, we read, "And the 
Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in 
a book and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua." Ex. 
xvii. 14. So in Numbers xxxiii. 1, 2: "These are 
the journeys of the children of Israel which went 



THE WHOLE BIBLE IS GOD'S MESSAGE. 47 

forth out of the land of Egypt with the armies 
under the hand of Moses and Aaron. And Moses 
wrote their going out according to their journeys, 
by commandment of the Lord." Ex. xxiv. 4: 
"And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. 
And he took the book of the cove- 
nant and read in the audience of the people, 
and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we 
do and be obedient." Ex. xxxiv. 27: "And the 
Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words, for 
after the tenor of these words have I made a cov- 
enant with thee and with Israel." 

We read likewise that Jeremiah was commanded 
to take a roll and write in it the words which God 
had spoken to him against Judah and Jerusalem. 
Habakkuk was charged to write the vision and 
make it plain. The writer of the Apocalypse dis- 
tinctly states that he wrote his visions by divine 
command. 

Daniel and Zechariah both testify that in their 
day there was a collection of sacred writings which 
had claims upon the faith of the people and were 
clothed with divine sanctions. Dan. ix. 2: "And 
I Daniel understood by the books the number of 
the years when the word of the Lord came to Jere- 
miah the prophet that he would accomplish seventy 



48 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

years in the desolations of Jerusalem." Zeeh, vii. 
7 : " Should ve not hear the words which the Lord 
hath cried by the former prophets when Jerusalem 
was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities 
thereof round about her, when men inhabited the 
south and the plain ?" Terse 12 : " Yea. they made 
their hearts as an adamant stone lest they should 
hear the law, and the words which the Lord of 
hosts hath sent in his Spirit by the former pro- 
phets." 

The Pentateuch is spoken of repeatedly in the 
Bible as God's law. Ps. xix. 7 : " The law of the 
Lord is perfect." Ps. cxix. 1 : " Blessed are the 
undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the 
Lord." Xeh. viii. 8: "So they read in the book 
in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and 
caused them to understand the reading." Verse 
14: "And they found written in the law which 
the Lord had commanded by Moses" (see Lev. xxiii. 
34, 42) "that the children of Israel should dwell in 
booths in the feast of the seventh month." Luke 
ii. 23: "As it is written in the law of the Lord" 
(see Ex. xiii. 2), " Every male that openeth the womb 
shall be called holy unto the Lord." 

It is a sufficient reason for holding all the books 
of the Old Testament in equal reverence, that they 



THE WHOLE BIBLE IS GOD'S MESSAGE. 49 

all had a place in the Canon, and were held 
sacred by the Jewish nation. They were all in- 
cluded among the " oracles of God/' of which the 
Jews were made the guardians. Rom. iii. 1, 2. 
And more than this, the Old Testament was recog- 
nized by our Saviour himself, and quoted as au- 
thoritative by him and his apostles. They accepted 
the Jewish Scriptures as God's message, and made 
no distinctions of rank between the several books. 
Under the name Scripture they embraced every- 
thing between Genesis and Malachi. " Think not, 
said Jesus, that I am come to destroy the law or 
the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to 
fulfill." Paul gives decided though incidental 
testimony to the authority of the historical books 
in Rom. xi. 2, where, quoting from 1 Kings 
xix. 14, he says, " Wot ye not what the Scripture 
saith of Elias, how he maketh intercession to God 
against Israel ?" etc. 

There are many other passages besides these 
which have been adduced in which the Scriptures 
assert their authoritative character. Thus our 
Saviour said, " Search the Scriptures, for in them 
ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they 
which testify of me." John v. 39. " Had ye be- 
lieved Moses, ye would have believed me : for he 



50 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, 
how shall ye believe my words?" John v. 46. 
"If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither 
would they be persuaded, though one rose from the 
dead/ 1 Luke xvi. 31. He reproves the two dis- 
ciples on the way to Emmaus because they lacked 
faith in the Scriptures : " O fools, and slow of 
heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken." 
Luke xxiv. 25. 

Peter exhorted those to whom his epistle was 
addressed to be " mindful of the words which had 
been spoken before by the holy prophets." Paul 
commends Timothy for his knowledge of the holy 
Scriptures, which were able to make him wise unto 
salvation, and which are profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, 
thoroughly furnished unto all good works. 2 Tim. 
iii. 15-17. 

The same apostle says to the Christians at 
Rome, ''• Whatsoever things were written aforetime, 
were written for our learning, that we through 
patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have 
hope." Rom xv. 4. A passage in the Second 
Epistle of Peter iii. 15-16, while teaching that 
the Scriptures are authoritative, and that it is 



THE WHOLE BIBLE IS GOD'S MESSAGE. 51 

dangerous to pervert them, gives very explicit 
testimony to the equality of the New Testament 
with the Old : " Even as our beloved brother 
Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him 
hath written unto you, as also in all his epistles 
speaking in them of these things; in which are 
some things hard to be understood, which they 
that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do 
also the other Scriptures, to their ow T n destruction." 
Citations like these might be multiplied, but 
these are enough for our purpose. Let us notice 
their bearing on the argument. The object of the 
writers in penning these passages was not to estab- 
lish the divine authority of the Old Testament. 
These passages are incidental allusions to well-es- 
tablished facts. When Ezra mentions the book of 
the Law ; when Matthew refers to the law of the 
Lord ; when the Saviour refers to Moses and the 
prophets ; when the apostles, all through their writ- 
ings, show their reverence for the Old Testament 
by prefacing their quotations with the words, What 
saith the Scripture, The Scripture saith, It is writ- 
ten, etc., they w T ere uttering no strange sentiments, 
were broaching no new doctrines. Hence these 
casual references to the authority of the Old Tes- 
tament are the strongest testimony we can have, 



52 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

because they show that it had such a place in the 
minds of those to whom the New Testament 
writers addressed themselves, that argument was 
unnecessary. 

It is proper, moreover, to remember that the 
authoritative character of the Bible does not rest 
exclusively on specific Scripture proofs. That the 
Scriptures were meant as a divine message is suf- 
ficiently indicated in the fact that they contain a 
revelation of supernatural truth, and together con- 
stitute an organic unity. So that these texts, even 
if they should seem inadequate to establish the 
proposition which I have placed at the beginning 
of this chapter, are conclusive when considered as 
corroborative of a proposition which rests on other 
ground as well. 




CHAPTER IV. 

DIVINE AGENCY EMPLOYED IN THE COMPOSITION OF 
SCRIPTURE. 

WE reach solid ground when we are assured 
that the Bible is the authoritative expression 
of God's will. But we cannot stop at this point 
in our investigation. We naturally desire to know 
how the books of Scripture were produced. 

The fact that the Bible is a divine message does 
not necessarily imply that it is a divine writing. 
The supernatural character of its contents does not 
settle the question concerning the agency employed 
in its composition. Our inquiries have as yet 
taught us nothing on the subject of inspiration. 
God might have allowed the prophets to record the 
revelations made to them, without exerting any 
further influence on them. Through the ordinary 
exercise of memory they might have preserved, 
with a degree of accuracy, the substance of the 
supernatural communications. For aught we have 
learned yet, the historical portions of the Bible 

53 



54 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

may have been composed under the general super- 
intendence of God, without any special exercise of 
divine agency in the choice of words or in the 
arrangement of materials. And if we were with- 
out evidence that the sacred writers received divine 
assistance in the composition of Scripture, we 
could not deny the claims of the Bible to be a di- 
vine message. We could not assert its infallibility, 
to be sure; we could not say that the message had 
undergone no change in passing through a human 
medium; but it would nevertheless possess sufficient 
accuracy to render him inexcusable who should 
refuse to take it as the guide of his life. 

Is the Bible a human or a divine account of 
supernatural revelations? Does God speak to us 
in his own words, or do the sacred writers give us 
their version of what they have seen and heard ? 
Does the divine message come to us as the direct 
utterance of God's mind, or has it taken the colour- 
ing of human imperfections in passing through the 
channel of human authorship? Now, the fact 
that the Bible is God's message raises the strongest 
presumption in favour of its infallibility. God 
speaks to men through the written w T ord. This is 
the only avenue by which man can expect divine 
communications to come. This volume was meant 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THEIR COMPOSITION 55 

to be a complete and perpetual embodiment of 
God's will in the matter of human salvation. It 
is fair for us to suppose that God would preserve 
it from errors incident to mere human authorship? 
We surely have every reason to expect that God 
would not give the world a book which makes 
known the only way of escape from divine wrath 
without guarding it against inaccuracies in the 
statement of facts and mistakes in the exposition 
of doctrine. We may fairly presume that God 
would not give us his revelations at second hand, 
but that he would place on the documents which 
contain it the stamp of divine authorship. 

This presumption is confirmed by several con- 
siderations, aside altogether from the texts which 
explicitly teach the inspiration of the Scriptures. 

(1.) Extended accounts of divine communications. 

It has been already said that the writers of 
Scripture might have reported the substance of the 
communications addressed to them, without super- 
natural aid. We must remember, however, that 
in many instances the Scriptures purport to give 
us not the substance, but a verbatim report, of what 
God said. Let the reader turn, for example, to 
Exodus xxv.-xxx. These chapters contain the oral 
instructions addressed to Moses concerning the 



56 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, 

setting up of the tabernacle. They are so varied, 
so novel, so disconnected, so minute, that the most 
retentive memory, we may say without hesitation, 
could not safely be entrusted with them. And yet, 
fidelity in the mention of the smallest details was 
necessary to the carrying out of God's will. The 
most trifling thing — the fringe of a curtain, the col- 
our of a vestment, the knop of a candlestick — if it 
was of sufficient importance to be a matter of di- 
vine instructions, was important enough to be 
correctly recorded. The best explanation of 
Moses' fidelity is, that God kept him from error by 
aiding in the composition of his books. 

(2.) Marvellous accuracy of Scripture. 

The accuracy of the sacred writers goes far be- 
yond that of other historians. The Bible is accu- 
rate to a superhuman extent. It is not only want- 
ing in mistakes sufficient to invalidate its claims to 
veracity, but it is not chargeable with any mistakes. 
It not only defies the industry of those who hunt 
through its pages for errors enough to overthrow 
the doctrine of plenary inspiration, bat these errors 
are missing to such a degree as to leave a very 
strong conviction on the mind that human agency 
was not left alone in its composition. 

We should not be surprised to find that writers 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THEIR COMPOSITION. 57 

who lacked the training necessary for the work of 
the historian should allow errors, in regard to mat- 
ters incidental to their main design, to creep into 
their writings. The four evangelists may have 
given us a faithful account of the events in our 
Lord's life of which they were eye-witnesses, even 
though their books were open to criticism in the 
passages which allude to a complex political system. 
But the most searching criticism brings to light no 
error in their pages. And this is the more remark- 
able, inasmuch as the Gospels and Acts of the 
Apostles cover a period in the history of Palestine 
which is marked by sudden and frequent political 
changes. Within half a century this little strip of 
country was "a single united kingdom under a 
native ruler; a set of principalities under native 
ethnarchs and tetrarchs ; a country in part contain- 
ing such principalities, in part reduced to the con- 
dition of a Roman province; a kingdom reunited 
once more under a native sovereign, and a country 
reduced wholly under Rome and governed by pro- 
curators dependent on the president of Syria, but 
still subject, in certain respects, to the Jewish mon- 
arch of a neighbouring territory/' How do we ex- 
plain the fact that four writers, who, we may sup- 
pose, had not had the experience which would fit 



58 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

them for close attention to the details of government, 
were able to thread their way with discriminating 
accuracy through the confusing system of mixed 
Roman and Jewish politics ? Perhaps it would be 
too much to say that Luke could not have obtained 
without supernatural aid the minute information 
which he has embodied in the Acts of the Apostles. 
But it w T ill certainly appear strange to any one who 
will consider it, that the companion of the Apostle 
Paul, visiting the different cities of the Mediterra- 
nean for the purpose rather of introducing a new 
religion than of gathering information, should show 
such minute acquaintance with the details of Roman 
government and jurisprudence, and should be able 
to refer without mistake to local customs and make 
use of words of only local currency. An ordinary 
writer, to whose main design these matters were 
purely incidental, would not have been particular 
to tell us that Sergius Paul us was a proconsul 
(avduTzazo-, translated deputy in our version), or 
that the rulers of Thessalonica were called poll- 
tarchsj or that Philippi was a colony, or that the 
most prominent man in Ephesus was called town- 
clerk (ypafifiarebz), or that the word which the 
Ephesians used to signify a worshipper means lite- 
rally a tcmplc-swecper (vsmxdpov). Nor would it be 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THEIR COMPOSITION. 59 

possible without special labour to avoid confusion, 
if he should attempt, in casual references to the po- 
litical status of different cities or to their officials, to 
make use of technical phrases. Yet Luke makes 
no mistake, never misapplies his epithets and never 
takes shelter under general terms. We should 
hardly have supposed that the author of the book 
of Acts had acquired such minute acquaintance 
with nautical terms and nautical affairs that he 
could give a detailed account of Paul's perilous 
voyage from Jerusalem to Rome. Yet this account 
has been laboriously examined and carefully com- 
pared with known facts of the present day by per- 
sons professionally conversant with nautical matters. 
The result has been, not only to establish the veri- 
table and trustworthy character of the narrative, 
but to enable the whole voyage to be traced as ac- 
curately as if a log-book of the particulars had 
been handed down from that day to this.* 

And let it be remembered that this minute accu- 
racy extends to the whole Bible. There is cer- 
tainly a very decided indication that supernatural 
agency was employed in the composition of the 
Scriptures, in the fact that a volume comprising 
sixty different compositions, bridging a period of 
*'Garbelt, God's Word Written, p. 233. 



60 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

four thousand years, containing revelations of the 
past and predictions of the future, embodying the 
annals of a nation and the religious experience of 
individuals, setting forth a system of doctrine for 
all men and every age, and yet full of allusions to 
matters of mere local interest, is absolutely free 
from error. We are aware that exception might 
be taken to this unqualified statement concerning 
the accuracy of Scripture ; but it is true, neverthe- 
less, that the appliances of the most exact modern 
scholarship have been brought to bear upon the 
study of the Bible, and that, with the exception of 
a few cases of contradiction, clearly attributable to 
the fault of copyists, the deniers of inspiration 
have not been able to prove against the Scriptures 
the charge of falsehood. 

(3.) Motives ascribed to men, and reasons assigned 
for divine acts. 

The sacred writers speak as assuredly Qgncerning 
the motives of men as if they had gained admit- 
tance into the chambers of the soul, and learned 
the secrets which are known only to the Searcher 
of hearts. They even go so far as to tell us how 
human actions appear in God's sight, and give us 
circumstantial interpretations of the providential 
dealings of the Most High. We can explain this 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THEIR COMPOSITION 61 

peculiar feature in the sacred histories only by the 
supposition that the authors of them were aided 
by the omniscient One. 

We read, Exodus xiv. 5, "And it was told the 
king of Egypt that the people fled ; and the heart 
of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against 
the people, and they said, Why have we done this, 
that we have let Israel go from serving us ?" etc # 
How did Moses know how Pharaoh felt or what 
he said when he heard of Israel's escape ? 

Again, 1 Chron. v. 26 : " And the God of Israel 
stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and 
the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and 
he carried them away," etc. 

2 Chron. xxviii. 5 : " Wherefore the Lord his 
God delivered him into the hand of the king of 
Syria," etc. Verse 19: " For the Lord brought 
Judah low, because of Ahaz king of Israel," etc. 
2 Chron. xxxvi. 15: "And the Lord God of their 
fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up 
betimes and sending; because he had compassion 
on his people and on his dwelling-place." Verse 
17: "Therefore he brought upon them the king 
of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with 
the sword," etc. 

What would we think of the historian who 



62 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

should presume to state the reasons which swayed 
the divine mind with reference to national history? 
" Who hath known the mind of the Lord, and 
who hath been his counsellor?" 

1 Chron. x. 13 : " So Saul died for his transgres- 
sion which he committed against the Lord," etc. 

1 Chron. xxi. 1 : " And Satan stood up against 
Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." 

How did the sacred writer get the information 
which he has given us in these verses ? 

Matt. ix. 21: "For she said within herself, If 
I may but touch his garment I shall be whole." 

Verse 36 : " But when he saw the multitude he 
was moved with compassion on them because they 
fainted," etc. 

Could human insight discern the thoughts 
which entered the mind of the woman when she 
touched the hem of the Saviour's garment, or un- 
derstand the feelings of Jesus when he looked upon 
the multitude? 

If these passages had been cited at an earlier 
stage in our investigation, it might have been 
said that they expressed only the surmises of the 
sacred writers. But we must remember that the 
writers of Scripture were divinely commissioned to 
write the books of the canons, and that the Bible 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THE IB COMPOSITION 63 

is an authoritative expression of God's will. We 
cannot suppose therefore that the authors of Scrip- 
ture could have made the serious assertions which 
we have quoted, and allowed them to stand on their 
pages as matters of history, if they had been fic- 
tions of their own brain. The statements would 
not have been made if the writers had not known 
them to be true, and they could not have known 
them to be true unless they had received informa- 
tion from God. 

Notice now that these quotations do not belong 
to the class of passages which are avowedly the 
record of divine communications. The writers do 
not tell us that God said that Satan tempted David 
to number Israel, or that Saul died because he 
asked counsel of one who had a familiar spirit. 
They make these statements in the same way that 
they narrate the most ordinary facts. On the sup- 
position that the whole record was shaped under 
divine superintendence, and that the divine mind 
aided the writers in the performance of their task, it 
is easy to understand why the passages we have quoted 
and many similar ones should have been accom- 
panied by no special reference to divine revelation. 
But if the sacred writers, though acting under 
divine commission, were, notwithstanding, the sole 



64 INSPIRATION OF THE SCBIPTVEES. 

authors of the books they wrote, it is strange that 
when they made statements which they could not 
or ought not to have made unless they received 
divine revelations, they did not substantiate their 
accounts by giving their authority. 

Of course it does not follow that because these 
and similar passages must have been written at the 
suggestion of God or by his assistance, therefore 
the whole Bible was so written. They are, how- 
ever, in a measure, confirmatory of a very strong 
presumption in favour of the infallibility of the 
Scriptures; and the argument based upon them, 
though not demonstrative, is a link in the chain of 
evidence by which the conviction is produced that 
the writers of Scripture were aided in the work 
entrusted to them by contact with the divine mind. 

(4.) Reticence of the writers, and their wisdom in 
the selection of facts. 

We have already seen that the sacred writers 
were divinely commissioned. We may suppose, 
moreover, that ample resources were at their com- 
mand for the performance of their work. AYe may 
grant that, possibly, Moses had access to pre-exist- 
ing documents in writing the history of the ante- 
diluvian world. But this will not explain the 
principle by which the writers were governed in 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THEIR COMPOSITION. 65 

the selection of facts. We cannot suppose that 
each writer had such latitude of discretion that 
he was allowed to put on record just what he sup- 
posed relevant to the purpose the Scriptures were 
designed to serve. The unity which pervades the 
Bible forbids the idea. The Bible was written 
with reference to a plan. Its parts fit into each 
other like the pieces of a mosaic. The writers 
have selected with consummate wisdom the salient 
points in the spiritual history of man. They dis- 
pose in a few sentences of topics on which ordinary 
writers love to dilate, and weave their materials 
into the form best adapted for the exhibition of 
a progressive plan of divine grace. For the accom- 
plishment of this task they needed, it seems to 
me, the constant guidance of divine wisdom. 

It is a noticeable feature in the Scriptures that 
the writers often omit the mention of details in 
matters concerning which we are naturally curious, 
and avoid the display of any personal feeling on 
occasions which would naturally elicit it. 

For illustration we may refer to the evangelists. 
How natural it would have been for them, had they 
been ordinary biographers, to have given us more 
information concerning the early years of the Sa- 
viour. John, especially, whose house furnished a 



66 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

home to the bereaved mother of our Lord, we 
would think, was in possession of ample materials 
for this work. How can we better explain this 
reticence than by supposing that the evangelists 
acted under divine instructions? Again, how 
wonderfully brief and unimpassioned is the lan- 
guage of the evangelists in the several accounts of 
our Lord's death ! They all record the circum- 
stances of the crucifixion, but not a syllable 
breathing indignation against the enemies of the 
Saviour is to be found in their pages. How 
strange it is that the intimate companions of Jesus 
should write his life without giving expression to 
a word of eulogy, and record his cruel death with- 
out entering a protest against the sin of crucifying 
the Lord of glory ! 

(5.) Relations subsisting between the several boohs 
of the Nexo Testament. 

The argument from design has been already used 
to show that the several books of the Bible stand 
on the same level, and that their authors held a 
divine commission to write the Scriptures. We 
cannot help thinking that it goes farther — that it 
testifies to a direct divine influence exerted upon 
the writers in the composition of the Bible. Let 
us illustrate the force of the argument by reference 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THEIR COMIOSITION 67 

to the relations which the several books of the New 
Testament sustain to each other. 

The New Testament opens with a fourfold bi- 
ography of Christ. It was right that we should 
grow familiar with his life before we were taught 
the doctrinal import of his work — right that we 
should know the facts on which the doctrines are 
based before our attention was called to elaborate 
expositions of the doctrines themselves. 

The four evangelists sustain a definite relation 
to each other, and together give us a complete por- 
traiture of the Saviour. The three synoptic gos- 
pels bring into greater prominence the human side 
of Christ's nature; while the gospel according to 
John brings out with greater distinctness the di- 
vine side, and opens with the sublime announce- 
ment, " In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God." 
Again, Matthew's gospel was evidently written for 
the Jew. His object is to show the relation of 
Christ to the theocracy as the Fulfiller of law and 
prophecy. Luke's gospel was meant for the Gen- 
tile; he accordingly represents Christ not as related 
to Judaism, but to the race. While Matthew's 
genealogy shows that Christ is the son of Abraham, 
Luke's represents him as a descendant of Adam, 



68 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

and therefore the brother of the whole human 
family. 

From the life of Jesus we turn to the history of 
the society of which he was the founder. The first 
history of the Christian Church was written by 
Luke, and we read it in the Acts of the Apostles. 
The theme of apostolic preaching was Christ — 
Christ crucified, Christ risen. The former was 
the fact of greatest doctrinal importance — the lat- 
ter was the fact of greatest evidential importance. 
With these two facts in their possession they were 
not afraid to preach even in Jerusalem the gospel 
of reconciliation. 

We are enabled in the book of Acts to watch the 
first steps in the progress of the infant Church. 
The gospel was preached first to the Jews, then to 
the Samaritans, then to Cornelius by Peter, and 
then to the world at large by the great apostle of 
the Gentiles. By degrees the channel of divine 
grace widened ; by degrees, as Providence opened 
the way, the glad tidings spread ; by degrees the 
purpose of God to include the Gentiles in the em- 
brace of the gospel disclosed itself to those who 
were privileged to be its first preachers. 

But after the Jew had professed faith in Christ, 
after the Gentile had cast away his idols and num- 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THEIR COMPOSITION. 69 

bered himself among the followers of Jesus — what 
then? Was the work complete? Far from it. 
A great change was to be effected in the character 
of the convert. New affections were to be im- 
planted — new direction given to the energies — 
higher views of life were to be instilled — more 
definite ideas of doctrine to be imparted — old hab- 
its were to be relinquished, old forms of thought 
to be abandoned. Having enlisted in Christ's ser- 
vice, he was to be drilled ; having taken his place 
in Christ's school, he was to be instructed. The 
foundation of a holy life being laid, he must be 
edified ; being justified, he was to be sanctified. 
Accordingly, the succeeding books of the New Tes- 
tament assume the epistolatory form. We have a 
collection of letters addressed to those who are al- 
ready in the Church — within the pale of Christian 
brotherhood — " to the saints and faithful brethren 
in Christ Jesus." And in these letters we have a 
picture of early Christian piety; we have an oppor- 
tunity of observing the influence of the gospel 
upon those who have but recently embraced it; 
we become acquainted with the trials through 
which the converts from heathenism passed, and 
the temptations to which they were exposed. These 
letters are full of Christian sympathy, are replete 



70 INSPIRATION OF THE SCJRIPTUBES. 

with principles for the guidance of Christian 
life, and are largely occupied with expansions of 
Christian doctrine and exhortations to holy 
living. 

And, what is more, they sustain a definite rela- 
tion to each other, We have the Epistle to the 
Romans devoted to the settlement of the question 
prompted by the universal conscience, " How shall 
man be just with God ?" The Epistles to the Corin- 
thians, practical in their aim, with an exposition 
of the great law of Christian expediency, and writ- 
ten in opposition to the pride of Greek philosophy 
and the licentiousness of a Grecian city; and 
these are followed by the Epistle to the Galatians, 
designed to strip the fetters of legalism from those 
whQm Christ declared to be free. Each fills an 
important place. Each contributes to the full un- 
folding of the plan of salvation — All together make 
one symmetrical organism, one consistent body of 
truth. No trace of disagreement is to be found 
in the doctrines of the Epistles. They present the 
truth in different phases, but it is the same truth. 
Though Peter was the subject of Paul's reproof, we 
discover no divergence in his Epistles from the doc- 
trines taught by the great apostle. " The faith 
expounded by Paul kindles into fervent hope in 



DIVINE AGENCY IN THEIR COMPOSITION. 71 

the words of Peter, and expands into sublime love 
in those of John." * 

Can we believe that the New Testament has as- 
sumed its present form by accident? Is it possible 
that a collection of writings exhibiting a progres- 
sive development of Christian truth, and closing 
with a prophecy concerning the future glory of the 
Church, could have been produced by a number of 
writers acting without consent, unless they acted 
under divine influence? 

* Bernard, Progress of Doctrine in New Testament. 

For the ideas embodied in the above remarks on the rela- 
tions of the several books of the New Testament to each other, 
the writer is indebted to the admirable volume of the Bamp- 
ton Lectures. 




CHAPTER V. 

PLENARY INSPIRATION. 

THERE is still room for inquiry concerning the 
extent to which divine agency was employed in 
the composition of Scripture. Were all the books 
of the Bible written under supernatural influence? — 
Canticles as well as the Pentateuch, Esther as well 
as the Acts? Do we know whether the divine 
mind operated on the writers in composing every- 
thing which they had put on record ? Was the 
agency which God exercised in the structure of the 
Bible akin to that of an architect in the erection of 
an edifice? Did he only superintend the work, 
suggesting to the sacred writers what facts to em- 
body in the records, and giving the plan according 
to which the materials were to be shaped ? Did 
the human authors of Scripture exercise their un- 
assisted faculties in composing the books of the 
Canon, save when divine revelation was needed to 
supplement the narrowness of human knowledge, 
and divine wisdom to correct the imperfections of 

72 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 73 

human judgment? Or did God exercise such an 
influence on the minds of the sacred writers that 
every part of the Bible is a product of the divine 
mind ? Did he suggest the thoughts which have 
been put on record, and leave the writers to the 
exercise of their own discretion in the choice of 
words, or are the words of Scripture the words of 
God ? In short, Have God and man divided the 
labour of composing the Bible, and do they therefore 
share the honour, or is the Bible God's book from be- 
ginning to end? These questions all resolve them- 
selves into the one which I shall endeavour to an- 
swer in this chapter: Do the Scriptures teach the 
doctrine of Partial or Plenary Inspiration ? There 
is ample material for a reply to this inquiry, at 
least so far as the Old Testament is concerned, as 
the following considerations will show : 

(L) Names applied to the Old Testament by writers 
of the New. 

The Old Testament is referred to upward of 
fifty times in the New Testament as the Scripture or 
the Scriptures. In Romans i. 2, it is called the 
Holy Scriptures {ypayolc, dycatz); in 2 Tim. Hi. 15 
the Hallowed Writings (Jepd ypd/i/jtaTa) ; in Rom. 
iii. 2, Heb. v. 12, 2 Pet. iv. 11, The Oracles of 
God (rd Xbyta zou 6sou). 



74 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 



The word yooapr^ Scripture, it is true, may be 
applied as well to one kind of writing as another. 
But the point to be noticed is, that it is employed 
in the New Testament in a restricted sense. It is 
always used to designate the Old Testament, to- 
gether with portions of the New. Hence, though 
applicable to every species of composition, it has in 
New Testament usage the force of a proper name, 
just as our word Bible has. When the evange- 
list spake of the Scriptures, there was no danger of 
their being misunderstood. There was no neces- 
sity for asking, What Scriptures? any more than 
there is any doubt what work we refer to when we 
speak of the Booh or the Bible. It is clear, there- 
fore, that the Old Testament held such a place in 
the minds of the apostles and of the whole Hebrew 
people that it was considered as the writings par ex- 
cellence. And further, the application of a common 
name to the whole Old Testament places all the 
books on the same level. If one book ranks as a 
divine writing, we cannot give a lower place to 
another. If some of the books were divine writings 
and others only human compositions, we should 
expect to find the distinction indicated in some way. 
But nothing of the kind is hinted at in the New 
Testament. The whole Hebrew Bible is included 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 75 

under the epithets, Holy Scripture, the Hallowed 
Writings, the Oracles of God. 

(2.) Deference paid to the Old Testament 
The references to the Old Testament which we 
find in the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles prove 
that their writers regarded it not only as an author- 
ity, but as an infallible authority; not only as a 
record of divine communications, but as one un- 
mixed with human error. They appeal with per- 
fect confidence to the Old Testament, and plainly 
tell us that the Scripture must be fulfilled. They 
do this, moreover, without any protest on the part 
of the Jewish nation. However much the Jews 
rejected the reasonings which the apostles based on 
the Old Testament, we have no hint that they ever 
denied the infallibility of the oracles of which they 
were made the guardians. Passages are quoted 
from the Old Testament as predictions verified in 
New Testament history, the relevancy of which 
depends upon the assumption that they are a cor- 
rect — a verbally correct — report of divine communi- 
cations. We may illustrate this by reference to the 
Gospel according to Matthew : " When he arose he 
took the young child and his mother by night and 
departed into Egypt, and was there till the death 
of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was 



76 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of 
Egypt have I called my son." Matt. ii. 14, 15; 
see Hosea xi. 1. " He departed into Galilee, and 
leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, 
which is upon the sea-coast in the borders of Zabu- 
lon and Nephthalim, that it might be fulfilled which 
was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, The 
land of Zabulon and the land of Nephthalim by the 
way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gen- 
tiles ; the people which sat in darkness saw a great 
light, and to them which sat in the region and 
shadow of death light is sprung up." Matt. iv. 12; 
see Isa. ix. 1. " Then sent Jesus two disciples, 
saying unto them, Go into the village over 
against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass 
tied and a colt with her; loose them and bring 

them unto me All this was done that 

the Scripture might be fulfilled which was spoken 
by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Zion, 
Behold thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sit- 
ting on an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." Matt, 
xxi. 1, 5; see Zech. ix. 9. " These parted his gar- 
ments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which 
w r as spoken by the prophet, They parted my gar- 
ments among them, and upon my vesture did they 
cast lots." Matt, xxvii. 35; Ps. xxii. 18. 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 77 

The confidence with which the evangelist makes 
these citations is a proof that the infallibility of 
the Old Testament was a settled point in the mind 
of the writer and in the minds of his Hebrew 
readers. For it is clear that if error is anywhere 
incorporated in the Old Testament, only revelation 
can bring it to light. If the writers of Scripture have 
mixed their own sentiments with the divine com- 
munications, it is not in the power of human dis- 
cernment to separate one from the other. It would 
be impossible, therefore, in that case, to speak pos- 
itively of any particular verse or clause of a verse 
and say that it is the word of God. Unless the 
Old Testament is an infallible expression of God's 
mind, the language of the evangelist is open to 
very serious criticism, and room is afforded for the 
charge that Matthew has based very weighty in- 
ferences on very insufficient testimony. For the 
question very naturally arises, How do we know 
whether the passages which have been cited are not 
human utterances, which have been inadvertently 
incorporated in the divine message? If error is 
present anywhere in the Old Testament, why may 
not these very citations be open to this objection ? 
Nor does it relieve the difficulty to say that the 
authority of the passages quoted by the evangelist 



78 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

is indicated by the Fact that Matthew was divinely 
commissioned to write his gospel, and must there- 
fore have been in a position to speak positively 
regarding these citations. This does not alter the 
fact that Matthew appealed to these passages on 
the simple ground that they are contained in the 
Old Testament. The force of his citations consists 
in the fact that in addressing Jewish readers he 
appealed to an authority whose infallibility they 
were prepared to admit. They had no supernatural 
means of discriminating truth from error, and 
therefore, unless they were ready to concede that 
everything in the Old Testament carried the divine 
sanction, it could not be expected that they should 
see any propriety in the assertions that the leading 
events in the life of Christ were shaped so as to 
bring about the fulfilment of some incidental ex- 
pressions scattered through the writings of the 
prophets. The phrase, ■" that it might be fulfilled" 
which occurs so often in the gospels, proves that 
the evangelists and those to whom they addressed 
themselves shared a common belief in the infalli- 
bility of the Old Testament. 

(3.) This infallibility asserted by the Saviour. 

Jesus gave very explicit testimony on this point. 
It will be sufficient to quote the passages which 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 79 

contain it. " And Jesus answered and said unto 
them, are ye come as against a thief with swords 
and with staves to take me? I was daily with 
you in the temple, teaching and ye took me not ; 
but the Scripture must be fulfilled" Mark xiv. 49. 
"Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not 
knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God." 
Matt. xxii. 29. " And he (Jesus) said unto them, 
O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the 
prophets have spoken ! Ought not Christ to have 
suffered these things, and to enter into his glory ? 
And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he 
expounded unto them in all these Scriptures the 
things concerning himself." Luke xxiv. 25-27. 

" And he said, These are the words which I 
spake unto you while I was yet with you, that 
all things must be fulfilled which were written in the 
law of Moses, and in the prophets and in the Psalms 
concerning me. Then opened he their understand- 
ing that they might understand the Scriptures, 
and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus 
it behooved Christ to suffer," etc. Luke xxiv. 
44-46. 

" Think not that I am come to destroy the law 
or the prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to 
fulfil, for verily, I say unto you, Till heaven and 



80 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass 
from the law till all be fulfilled:' Matt. v. 17, 18. 

The names, Scripture, the Law and the Prophets, 
the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, employed by 
our Saviour, were familiar to Jewish ears, and cov- 
ered the entire volume of Old Testament writings. 
The words of Jesus which we have just quoted 
put the stamp of infallibility upon the Hebrew 
Bible. 

(4.) Verbal references to the Old Testament. 

If the evidence which has been already advanced 
is not considered strong enough to shut out the 
possibility of any error in the Old Testament, let 
it be noticed that we have the most emphatic testi- 
mony to the infallibility of its very words. On a 
single word in the Old Testament our Saviour 
based his reply to those who denied the doctrine 
of the resurrection : " But as touching the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, have ye not read that which was 
spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of 
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of 
the living." Matt xxii. 31, 32. 

In defending himself from the charge of blas- 
phemy, he makes use of a single word in the 
eighty-second Psalm: "Jesus answered them, Is it 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 81 

not written in your law, I said ye are gods ? If 
he called them gods to whom the word of God 
came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, say ye 
of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent 
into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said I 
am the Son of God ?" John x. 34. Our Saviour 
justifies in parenthesis his appeal to this expression 
in the eighty-second Psalm, by reminding his hear- 
ers of the infallibility of the Scriptures. The pas- 
sage is of great value in the discussion of the sub- 
ject of inspiration, for it shows that our Saviour 
considered that not the thoughts merely, but the 
language also, of Holy Writ possessed divine au- 
thority, since he made the solemn utterance, And 
the Scriptures cannot be broken, in order to justify 
an argument based on a single word. 

Notice the instances in which the correspondence 
between Old Testament prediction and New Testa- 
ment fulfilment depends on single words. We may 
refer to the " thirty pieces of silver," the "potter's 
field/' " the parting of the garments," as illustra- 
tions. If we are prepared to say that these allu- 
sions were regarded by the sacred writers as only 
remarkable coincidences, we should not allow them 
much weight in the argument. But inasmuch as 
the New Testament was written by men divinely 



82 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

commissioned, we must suppose that the writers 
were honest in what they say, and competent there- 
fore to speak on the subject. Their mention of 
these incidents in our Lord's life as fulfilments of 
the Old Testament predictions must be regarded 
as proof that the divine agency employed in the 
composition of Scripture extended even to the 
choice of words. 

Let us turn to the Epistles of Paul, and we shall 
find that verbal quotations from the Old Testament 
are extensively employed by that apostle for argu- 
mentative purposes. " St Paul rests his proof that 
the Jews as well as the Gentiles were concluded 
under sin on two little words occurring in the 
fourteenth Psalm — on the word 'none' in the 
first verse, and on the word 'alP in the third. 
Let these two little words be changed, and the 

apostle's argument falls at once He teaches 

the equality of all men before God, and the free- 
dom of this divine mode of saving, on the au- 
thority of a single emphatic word used by the 
prophet Joel — ' whosoever.' On this word he 
elaborately argues, Rom x. 12: ' There is no dif- 
ference between the Jew and the Greek, for the 
same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon 
him.' Then comes the authority for the assertion; 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 83 

' For whosoever shall call upon the name of the 
Lord shall be saved.' .... In arguing in Gal. 
iii. 16, that the promise of eternal life is annexed 
to faith and not to human merit, he argues not 
alone from a single word, but from a single letter — 
from the fact that a word is used in the singular, 
not in the plural, i He saith not, And to seeds, as of 
many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is 
Christ.'"* 

Some writers see in these citations only evidences 
of false reasoning on the part of the apostles. And 
we must confess that if the quotations from the 
Old Testament are the words of mere human au- 
thors, they have been adduced with unpardonable 
looseness. Unless the words of the Old Testament 
are invested with divine authority, it will be diffi- 
cult to escape the conviction that the most weighty 
conclusions have been based on very frivolous prem- 
ises. But we know too much of Paul's honesty 
and Paul's logic to charge him with such argumen- 
tative unfairness, and because we cannot take the 
position of the skeptic, we are obliged to conclude 
that these citations give the strongest testimony to 
the verbal infallibility of the w T hole Old Testa- 
ment. 1 say, of the whole Old Testament, for there 
* Garbett, p. 312. 



84 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

is no reason for supposing that these passages which 
have been cited occupy a different rank from others 
which have received no special mention. Besides, 
Ave must remember that the apostle's reasoning 
proceeds on this assumption. A premise is sup- 
pressed in his argument, and that is the admitted 
infallibility of the Scriptures. Single words are 
available for purposes of argument, because they 
are contained in the Scriptures. Deny the verbal 
infallibility of the Old Testament as a whole, and 
it will be impossible for us to attach much import- 
ance to arguments based on particular passages. 

(5.) Direct assertions of divine authorship. 

The best — I may say, the only — way of accounting 
for the absolute authority which we find the words 
of Scripture to possess, is to suppose that the 
sacred writers were influenced in their choice of 
language by the divine mind. Having proved the 
verbal infallibility of the Old Testament, its divine 
authorship seems to follow as a necessary conse- 
quence. At all events, very little Scripture testi- 
mony will be sufficient to make the argument for 
plenary inspiration conclusive. 

There are two passages which give testimony to 
the divine authorship of the Old Testament, from 
the singular use of the word Scripture. Thus we 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 85 

read, Rom. ix. : " For the Scripture saith unto 
Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised 
thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and 
that my name might be declared throughout the 
earth." Gal. iii. 8 : " The Scripture, foreseeing that 
God would justify the heathen through faith, 
preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, 
In thee shall all nations be blessed." These pas- 
sages are not parallel to those in which Scripture 
is personified and quotations are prefaced with the 
words, " Thus saith the Scripture." Hence it is 
represented as saying what was said by God, of 
doing what was done by God, of wearing attributes 
which belong only to God. This can be explained 
only by the supposition that the apostle was so 
thoroughly convinced that the words of the Old 
Testament are the utterances of God that Scrip- 
ture is identified with its author, and the acts 
of the latter are represented as being done by the 
former. There are passages, particularly in the Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews, in which the words of Scripture 
are quoted as those of God. Heb. i. 5 : " For unto 
which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art 
my Son?" and verse 7: "And of the angels he 
saith." Verse 8: "But unto the Son he saith." 
viii. 8: "For finding fault with them, he saith." 



86 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

Verse 13 : "In that he saith, A new covenant, he 
hath made the first old." This mode of citation, 
which is peculiar to the Epistle to the Hebrews, is 
a strong testimony to the divine authorship of the 
Old Testament. The Scriptures must have been 
regarded as equivalent to the utterances of God, or 
there would have been no propriety in making 
quotations from these with the preface, "He 
saith" instead of, " It is written" 

Again, passages are cited from the Scriptures as 
the words of the Holy Ghost. Heb. iii. 7 : " Where- 
fore, as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day, if ye will 
hear his voice, harden not your hearts," etc. Heb. 
x. 15: "Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness 
to us : for after that he had said before, This is the 
covenant that I will make with them after those 
days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their 
hearts, and in their minds will I write them," etc. 
The union of the divine and human agencies in the 
composition of Scripture is set forth in the follow- 
ing quotations: Acts iv. 24 : "'And when they 
heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with 
one accord and said, Lord, thou art God who hast 
made heaven and earth, and the sea and all that in 
them is, ivho, by the mouth of thy servant David, hast 
said, Why did the heathen rage and the people 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. Si 

imagine a vain thing?" Acts i. 16: "And in those 
days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples 
and said, .... Men and brethren, this Scripture 
must needs have been fulfilled which the Holy Ghost, 
by the mouth of David, spake before concerning 
Judas/' etc. 

There are two passages which directly assert the 
inspiration of the Old Testament. 2 Pet. i. 20 : 
" Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scrip- 
ture is of any private interpretation. For the pro- 
phecy came not in old time by the will of man, but 
holy men of old spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost." 2 Tim. iii. 15, 16 : " And that from 
a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures (to. Upa 
ypappara), which are able to make thee wise unto 
salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. 
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" etc. 
(naaa ypa<prj deoxveoozoz). This passage, viewed in 
the light of the foregoing evidence, must be re- 
garded as conclusive testimony to the plenary in- 
spiration of the Old Testament. 

It will not affect the argument to translate this 
passage, All Scripture is given by inspiration, or 
every Scripture given by inspiration of God is 
profitable. The reference in either case is to the 
whole Old Testament, alluded to in the previous 



88 INSPIRATION OF THE SCEIPTUBES. 

verse as the holy Scriptures — Hpa ypaju/iaTa. If 
the first translation is a correct one, the passage is 
an assertion of inspiration on the part of the apostle. 
If the second be the true rendering, inspiration is 
alluded to as an admitted truth, and made the 
ground for the assertion that the Scriptures are 
able to make wise unto salvation. However trans- 
lated, the passage must be regarded as testimony to 
the theopneustic character of the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures. Aside from the evidence which we have 
already considered, we could not rest a very posi- 
tive argument on this single passage, for dis- 
cussion might arise on the exact meaning of the 
word deoTtvzDOToz. This expression must be inter- 
preted in the light of the foregoing evidence. The 
conclusions we have already reached may be fairly 
used to help us in our attempt to define its mean- 
ing; for this meaning, whatever it be, must be 
compatible with the facts already discovered. We 
find that the Scriptures give evidence of the pres- 
ence of the divine mind in their composition ; that 
the New Testament writers regarded the Old Tes- 
tament as infallible, and rest elaborate arguments 
on single w r ords taken from its passages ; that pas- 
sages are quoted as the utterances of God, and that 
others are ascribed to the Holy Ghost as the author 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 89 

of them. In asserting, therefore, that the Old Tes- 
tament is theopneustic — God-breathed — the apostle 
must have meant that the sacred writers were in- 
fluenced even in their choice of words by the Holy 
Ghost. 

" The New Testament canonizes the Old ; the 
Incarnate Word sets his seal on the Written 
Word. The Incarnate Word is God — therefore, 
the inspiration of the Old Testament is authenti- 
cated by God himself* The testimony to the 
inspiration of the New Testament is, we confess, 
less explicit and not so abundant. We might ex- 
pect this to be the case, from the simple fact that 
God's message was completed in the writings of the 
New Testament. The apostles were the legitimate 
successors of the prophets, and, as such, gave ample 
testimony to their inspiration ; but the apostles 
themselves had no successors. Besides, when the 
inspiration of the Old Testament is established, but 
little evidence is needed to warrant the inference 
Uhat the New is likewise inspired. The Old and 
New Testaments are parts of the same divine mes- 
sage. They constitute a progressive unity ; they 
exhibit the development of a single plan of salva- 
tion. Can we suppose that the Old Testament is 
* Wordsworth on the Canon, p. 51, Am. ed. 



90 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

God's word and the New Testament only man's 
word ? Are the Gospels human productions, while 
the Pentateuch is an inspired writing ? The pre- 
sumption in favor of the inspiration of the New 
Testament is so strong that only very decided evi- 
dence to the contrary could make us doubt it. It 
must be borne in mind that the gift of inspiration 
was distinctly promised by our Saviour to his dis- 
ciples : " When they bring you unto the synagogues 
and unto magistrates and powers, take ye no thought 
how or what thing ye shall answer or what ye shall 
say : for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same 
hour what ye ought to say." Luke xii. 11, 12. 
" When they shall lead you and deliver you up, 
take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, 
neither do ye premeditate; but whatsoever shall be 
given you in that hour that speak ye : for it is not 
ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost." Mark xiii. 11. 
" Settle it therefore in your heart not to meditate 
before what ye shall answer: for I will give you a 
mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall 
not be able to gainsay nor resist." Luke xxi. 14. 
The apostles, moreover, claimed to speak by divine 
guidance : " I say the truth in Christ ; I lie not ; 
my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy 
Ghost." Romans ix. 1. " Which things also we 



PLENARY INSPIRATION. 91 

speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, 
but in words which the Holy Ghost teacheth, com- 
paring spiritual things with spiritual" (1 Cor. ii. 
13 — 7rveu{iaTao'cz nveufiaztxa (Tuyxpcvovrez) "joining 
spiritual things to spiritual words." See Hodge 
on 1 Cor. in loo. " I told you before, and foretell 
you as if I were present the second time, and being 
absent now I write to them who heretofore have 
sinned and to all other, that if I come again I will 
not spare, since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking 
in me which to you ward is not weak, but is mighty 
in you." 2 Cor. xiii. 2, 3. It may be said, how- 
ever, that these passages, after all, only prove that 
the apostles were inspired in their oral utterances. 
But would they be inspired to speak and not be in- 
spired to write f Is it likely that if they w T ere in- 
spired when called before a human tribunal, they 
w T ere left to the exercise of their fallible judgment 
in composing the books which should nourish the 
faith of God's people in every age? Certainly 
Paul did not suppose that so wide a difference ex- 
isted between his oral and his written instructions 
when he said to the Thessalonians, " Stand fast and 
hold the traditions ye have been taught, whether 
by word or our epistle" 2 Thess. ii. 13. 

With the quotation of a single passage from the 



92 IXSPIRATIOX OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

Second Epistle of Peter we shall close the evidence 
on the question of New Testament inspiration. It 
is one in which the Epistles of Paul are recognized 
as co-ordinate in point of authority with the Old 
Testament writings : " Even as our beloved brother 
Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, 
hath written unto you, as also in all his epistles, 
speaking in them of these things, in which are some 
things hard to be understood, which they that are 
unlearned and unstable wrest as they do also the 
other Scriptures unto their own destruction." 2 
Pet. iii. 15-17. 

We are led, as the result of our inquiries, to the 
irresistible conclusion that the books of the Bible 
— constituting, as they do, a unity; contributing 
severally to the development of a single scheme 
of divine grace ; claiming to be a message to men 
from God; speaking in terms of authority concern- 
ing duty and destiny — were composed by men who 
acted under the influence of the Holy Ghost to 
such an extent that they were preserved from 
every error of fact, of doctrine, of judgment; and 
these so influenced in their choice of language that 
the words they used were the words of God. This 
is the doctrine which is known as that of Plenary 
Verbal Inspiration. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 

ATHEISM or Christianity is the alternative 
which an infidel philosophy offers the world. 
The controversy between Christian and anti-Chris- 
tian thought must therefore turn upon the question 
regarding the divine authority of the Bible. Hence 
it is not difficult to account for the growing skep- 
ticism throughout Christendom with regard to the 
plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. 

There is, of course, a very wide difference between 
those who hold imperfect views of inspiration and 
those who deny it altogether. Some take the ex- 
treme pantheistic position that a revelation is im- 
possible; some resolve inspiration into genius, and 
allow that Isaiah and Paul were inspired in the 
sense that Homer and Shakespeare were. Some are 
advocates of a partial inspiration, and are willing 
to concede that the doctrines of the Bible were in- 
fallibly recorded through divine agency, while they 
hold that the writers were left to the exercise of 
their ordinary faculties in selecting and recording 

93 



94 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

the facts. Some have no difficulty in supposing 
that the thoughts were suggested to the sacred 
writers by the Holy Ghost, while they were left 
to the exercise of their unassisted powers in cloth- 
ing them with words. However wide the differ- 
ences which separate these classes of men, they 
•agree in denying that all the parts of the Bible 
were written by men under the influence of the 
Holy Ghost in such a sense that the words of 
Scripture are the words of God. Even men who 
stand high in theological circles embrace a theory 
of inspiration which tolerates mistakes on the part 
of the sacred writers. Fairness, therefore, demands 
that we give due attention to the difficulties which 
are said to encumber this doctrine. 

Before entering upon a consideration of the ob- 
jections, I would remind the reader that the pres- 
ent attitude of thought is alarmingly Rationalistic. 
There is a growing disposition to make human 
reason the standard of truth. The infallibility of 
private opinion is, with many, a far more palatable 
doctrine than the infallibility of the Bible. Hence, 
the readiness, and in many cases the delight, with 
which men find objections to the doctrine under dis- 
cussion. It is a noticeable fact that in the doctrinal 
controversies of the day, the so-called rational argu- 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 95 

ment is employed by those who reject the truth far 
more than the argument from Scripture. Men take 
the element of guilt out of sin, the element of satis- 
faction out of the atonement, the element of justice 
out of God's nature, on the ground of certain pre- 
conceived opinions with regard to the relations we 
sustain to God. The opponents of the doctrines 
of the Church do not rest their case on exegetical 
grounds, but the Scripture, when it is used at all, 
is employed mainly to lend the appearance of sup- 
port to a foregone conclusion. The real argument, 
however disguised, is, a This is my opinion." 

Let us now notice briefly the main objections 
which have been urged against the doctrine of 
inspiration. 

(1.) Revelation said to be impossible. 

The first class of objectors are those who forestall 
all inquiry by the assertions that a revelation is im- 
possible. This objection has might only on the 
supposition that there is no God. But if a man 
adopts a philosophy which leads to Atheism, the 
only way to answer his objection is to upset his 
philosophy. Suppose the question were asked, 
Given the universal belief of mankind in the ex- 
istence of God, can we vindicate that belief? And 
this in my judgment is really the fair way of pre- 



96 INSPIRATION OF THE SCBIPTUEES. 

senting the question concerning the being of God. 
How should we proceed? We could not take a 
single step in settling this question unless we had 
correct views on a fundamental question in psy- 
chology. To establish the doctrine of Theism it is 
necessary to vindicate the authority of primary be- 
liefs. Now, consciousness is the common material 
out of which philosophy of every complexion is 
made. Men differ in their interpretations of con- 
sciousness, while they admit that her authority is 
unquestionable. All agree that consciousness tes- 
tifies to the distinction answering to the words sub- 
ject and object, ego and non ego, AVe cannot think, 
feel or will without realizing this distinction. The 
question arises, Is the distinction ultimate? Can 
we trust our intuitive conviction? The battle- 
ground of the rival philosophies is just here. It 
may be said that there is no real ground for the 
distinction between self and not self, but (1) what 
we call the " not self" is only the necessary modi- 
fication of the mind; in which case our logical land- 
ing-place is a system of idealistic Pantheism. Or 
(2) that what we call "self v is only a modification 
of matter; in which case we fall into unqualified 
Materialism. I am stating a well-known fact in 
the history of opinion when I say that the pan- 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 97 

theistie character of the post-Kantian philosophy 
of Germany is attributable to the denial of the 
fundamental distinction between subject and object 
to which consciousness testifies. The materialistic 
character of the Positive Philosophy, represented by 
such men as J. S. Mill, Bain, Herbert Spencer, 
has its root in the same psychological error. It is 
unnecessary for me to repeat the arguments by 
which Sir William Hamilton demonstrated the 
duality of consciousness as an ultimate fact in our 
constitution. What I have said will be sufficient 
to show how intimately the philosophical questions 
of the day are connected with fundamental doc- 
trines of the Christian system. The objection that 
a revelation is impossible grows out of a false 
philosophy, which, by denying the validity of our 
primary beliefs, leads to Atheism. Granted that 
there is a God, it is absurd to say that he cannot 
reveal himself. 

(2.) The Bible said to contradict science. 

Truth cannot contradict truth. We cannot re- 
sist the conclusions which have been fairly arrived 
at by scientific men. We cannot resist the evidence 
that the Bible is the word of God. The discrepan- 
cies, therefore, between Scripture statements and the 
theories of science prove either that we have misin- 



98 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

terpreted Scripture or that the scientific theories 
are untrue. Sometimes it may be necessary to 
modify our translation of the Bible in the light of 
scientific discovery. Science, therefore, ought to be, 
and has been, an exegetical help. Inspiration must 
not be held responsible for our erroneous interpre- 
tations. The discoveries of geology have thrown 
light upon the first chapter of Genesis, but what- 
ever theory be adopted for the purpose of harmo- 
nizing the two accounts of the early history of our 
planet, the inspiration of Genesis is unaffected. 

It is asking too much, however, when we are re- 
quired to accommodate our interpretation of Scrip- 
ture to a theory which is still a matter of debate 
among scientific men. We cannot give up the 
Scripture account of the creation on the ground 
that it does not agree with Darwin's theory of the 
origin of species, for the simple reason that on sci- 
entific ground Darwinianism has been proved to be 
untrue. The objection that the sacred writers are 
destitute of astronomical knowledge, and that their 
language is in accordance with an unscientific age, 
when men believed that the earth Avas a flat surface 
and that the heavenly bodies actually moved as they 
appeared to an observer on the earth, is too obvi- 
ously foolish to need refutation. " The purpose of 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 99 

holy Scripture," says Baronius, " is to teach us how 
to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go."* 
The Bible was not intended as a text-book in sci- 
ence, and we have no right to expect that it should 
anticipate the discoveries of a thousand years. It 
was intended for the ignorant and the learned alike, 
and in order that it might be understood it was 
necessary that events should be described in the 
language of every-day life. No charge of scien- 
tific inaccuracy can damage the authority of the 
Scriptures, when it is remembered that the teaching 
of science forms no part of the object for which 
they were given. And the accuracy of Scripture 
is sufficiently indicated when it is shown that in 
describing phenomena in the language of every-day 
life it teaches no error. This has been done again 
and again. 

(3.) The Bible said to contradict itself. 

As early as the time of Celsus, in the second cen- 
tury, the discrepancies which are found in the Bible, 
especially in the evangelists, were made use of as 
arguments against the divine authority of the Scrip- 
tures, and at the present day are sources of anxiety 
to many who cannot be accused of any desire to 
find objections to inspiration. The following are 

* Quoted by Guizot, Meditations, 1st Ser., p. 187, Am. ed. 



100 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

some of the alleged instances of contradiction : In 
the accounts of the cure of the centurion's servant, 
Matthew (viii. 5-13) states the centurion came to 
Jesus, while Luke (vii. 1-10) says that he sent first 
the elders of the Jews and then his friends. There 
are three accounts of the curing of blindness at 
Jericho. Matthew (xx. 30) mentions that there 
were two blind men, Mark (x. 46) and Luke (xviii. 
35) mention only one. Matthew and Mark say the 
miracle was performed when Jesus was going out of 
Jericho — Luke, when he was coming in. Matthew 
(viii. 28), relating the incident of the demoniacs at 
Gadara, states that there were two men who met 
Jesus, while Mark (v. 2) mentions only one. Simi- 
lar discrepancies are alleged to exist in the accounts 
which we have of our Lord's infancy and of his re- 
surrection, as well as of the inscriptions on the cross. 
The same objection is also raised with reference to 
the twofold record of the sermon on the mount. 

How are we to meet this objection ? In the first 
place, we must remember that the inspiration of 
the Scriptures has already been established by the 
most abundant evidence. That being the case, we 
are safe in assuming that these apparent contra- 
dictions are only apparent. Any hypothesis which 
will harmonize the discrepancies must be considered 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 101 

a fair answer to the objection. This principle would 
be considered valid in any other department of in- 
quiry, and its application here ought not to be ob- 
jected to. If, for example, certain phenomena in 
nature were observed which apparently contra- 
dicted the law of gravitation, the scientific student 
would feel that any hypothesis should be accepted 
which would explain the contradiction, and if none 
could be suggested, rather than give up the estab- 
lished doctrine of gravitation, he would be willing 
to wait until further discovery should throw light 
upon the subject. With regard to most of the 
alleged discrepancies to be found in Scripture the 
method of harmonizing is very simple. 

One hundred and forty-four passages are recon- 
ciled by the application of this simple rule given 
by Mr. Garbett ;* " Variations of statements are 
not contradictions when they arise either from record- 
ing different parts of some common events or from 
assigning a different emphasis and importance to the 
same parts" Take the case of the centurion, above 
quoted. Luke's statement does not contradict 
Matthew's, unless we suppose that each intended 
to tell the whole story. There is nothing unnatural 
in the supposition that he sent first the elders, and 
* God's Word Written, p. 267. 



102 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

then his friends, and that finally, through anxiety 
for his servant, he came himself. Take the case 
of the angels at the sepulchre ; Matthew and Mark 
mention one, Luke says there were two. The 
accounts are not irreconcilable. Matthew related 
the appearance of the angel in connection with the 
rolling away of the stone. It was enough for his 
purpose to mention one. Mark mentions the angel 
who addressed the women. His silence with re- 
gard to the presence of another does not contradict 
Luke's account. We cannot bring the charge of 
contradiction against the evangelists in these and 
similar instances, unless we adopt the rule that 
truthfulness in the report of the same occurrence 
by different persons is inconsistent with circum- 
stantial variations. 

Mr. Garbett gives another very important rule : 
"Separate transactions are not to be identified with 
each other because of a parallelism between some cir- 
cumstances of an event or some portions of a dis- 
course." 

When Mark states that Jesus cured a blind man 
when he went out of Jericho, he clearly contradicts 
Luke, who relates that the cure was performed 
when he was going into Jericho — provided the two 
accounts refer to the same event. But the discrep- 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 103 

ancy is easily removed by the supposition that the 
evangelists relate two distinct miracles. If there 
remain passages which we cannot reconcile, we 
must conclude that the discrepancies arise out of 
the absence of the historical links which would 
show their connections. It would be unfair, after 
all the evidence we have for the inspiration of the 
Scriptures, to charge the same writers with glaring 
contradictions, because from our defective informa- 
tion we are unable to harmonize their statements. 
Says Dr. Lee : " It has been reserved for modern 
times to suggest a solution which has been almost 
universally accepted, and which removes every 
shade of difficulty from the case. Mark asserts 
that our Lord was crucified ' at the third hour/ or 
at nine o'clock in the forenoon; while according to 
John, Pilate about the sixth hour was still sitting 
in judgment. The explanation of this apparent 
discordance in time — an explanation which even 
Strauss, while exaggerating 'the difficulty' to the 
utmost, allows to be 'possible' — is, that John has 
given the hour according to the Roman calcula- 
tion of time, which counted as we do from mid- 
night; while Mark adheres to the Jewish custom 
of counting from sunrise." Closer study of the 
Scriptures, and increased knowledge of subjects 



104 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

cognate to these inquiries, we may well hope, will 
clear up many difficulties which now serve to try 
our faith. 

(4.) Unimportant passages. 

Some men shrink from the doctrine of plenary 
inspiration lest they should be compelled to be- 
lieve that Paul sent his salutations to Tryphena 
and Tryphosa, and gave special instructions con- 
cerning the cloak which he left at Troas, while 
writing under the influence of the Spirit. I have 
not space to dwell upon the importance of these 
so-called insignificant details. If I could show, as 
Gaussen has beautifully shown,* how vividly in 
these passages the apostle is presented to us in the 
circumstances of his daily life; if I could show 
that these passages complained of are the modest 
witnesses to the self-sacrifice of Paul ; if I could 
show that they are expressions of the tenderness 
of his nature, of his affectionate regard for those 
who have ministered to him ; if I could show that 
these passages contain vivid pictures of the rela- 
tions sustained by the members of the primitive 
Church to each other; if I could show that these 
salutations, said to be unworthy of inspiration, are 
suggestive of the lesson that Christianity ought to 
* Gaussen on Inspiration, p. 186, American edition. 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 105 

manifest itself in Christian courtesy and a delicate 
consideration of the wants of others, — then I think 
the objections that these so-called insignificant pas- 
sages are unworthy of a place in a volume of in- 
spired writings would fall to the ground. 

(5.) Objections based on 1 Cor. chapter vii. 

In the sixth verse of this chapter Paul says, 
" I speak this by permission, not of command- 
ment." It is argued that the apostle here clearly 
distinguishes the words which he spoke by divine 
authority from those which he uttered in the ex- 
ercise of his own judgment. The difficulty is en- 
tirely removed by a more correct translation. He 
is teaching not that there are some things which 
he is permitted to say, and some which he speaks 
by commandment, but that his recommendation 
was not given in the way of positive command, but 
of allowance: "I say this by way of allowance 
for you, not by way of command." 

Again, in verse 10, he says, "Unto the married 
I command, yet not I, but the Lord;" verse 12: 
" But to the rest speak I, not the Lord ;" verse 25 : 
" Now, concerning virgins, I have no commandment 
of the Lord, yet I give my judgment." 

"By which language," says he,* "he is supposed 
*Gaussen, on Inspiration, p. 272. 



106 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

to intimate that this certain point of Scripture the 
author may write according to his own uninspired 
human judgment, although guided in other por- 
tions of his work by the Holy Ghost. Such an 
inference, however, is altogether at variance with 
Paul's design, whose words in this case can only 
be distorted into an argument against inspiration 
by utterly overlooking his object and meaning. 
The first of the three expressions which have been 
quoted, ( I command, yet not I, but the Lord/ ob- 
viously refers to the institution by Christ (as Mark 
has recorded the circumstances) of the original law 
of marriage, and relates to an ordinance revealed 
from the very first and obligatory on every occa- 
sion and in every age; while, by the two latter 
passages — on which the argument against inspira- 
tion rests — Paul, as the context clearly proves, 
merely intends to convey that Christ had directly 
provided for those particular cases in which his 
apostle now pronounces his inspired and author- 
itative opinion." 

I have noticed the main objections to the doc- 
trine of plenary inspiration. There are others 
which arise out of a misunderstanding of the doc- 
trine, and some of these will be considered in the 
next chapter. 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 107 

It is but fair that we should now ask those who 
maintain a theory of partial inspiration what proof 
they have to offer in support of it? Our conclu- 
sions, if they have been fairly reached, throw upon 
those who differ with us the burden of proving 
their position. We find nothing in the Bible to 
favour a theory which labels one part of it as God's 
work and another as man's. We have a right, 
therefore, to say to him who holds such an opinion, 
" Your theory presupposes that you are able to put 
your finger on certain passages of Scripture and 
say, These are divine, and on certain other passages 
and say, These are human. Only by your ability 
to discriminate between what is man's and what is 
God's in the Bible can you save your theory from 
the charge of begging the question. And if you pro- 
pose to be able to make this discrimination, then 
we ask you to tell us the standard by which you 
are governed." In reply to this challenge we should 
doubtless be referred to a so-called " verifying fac- 
ulty" Says the author of " Liber Librorum/' " We 
now approach that portion of our task which de- 
mands of us ( a principle,' by the help of which we 
may, without weakening our faith in Scripture as 
a whole, separate its parts and distinguish between 
that which is divine and that which is human. 



108 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

We call this the 'verifying faculty/ and regard it 
as being neither more nor less than ' reason enlight- 
ened and sanctified by the Holy Ghost.' "* " Reason," 
as Bishop Butler says, who is quoted by this author 
in the sentence following the above, " is the only 
faculty we have wherewith to judge. concerning any- 
thing, even revelation itself." But there is a proper 
and an improper use of reason in matters of religion. 
When reason is exercised within her proper sphere, 
she has not a syllable to say against plenary inspi- 
ration. It is only when she has given her judg- 
ment in questions over which she has no jurisdic- 
tion, that objections have been raised against the 
doctrine. 

Contradictions cannot be true, and inspiration 
could not make them credible. If the Bible is a 
bundle of contradictions, we may safely say that it 
did not come from a God of truth. But reason is 
going outside of her province when she brings the 
charge of contradiction against discrepant state- 
ments, simply because the means of reconciling 
them are not at hand. Again, the distinction be- 
tween right and wrong is a moral intuition. God 
cannot do wrong. But it is clear that many things 
are right for God to do which would be wrong for 
* Page 77.. 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 109 

men to do. It is wrong for a man to slay his 
neighbour, but who will dispute God's right to dis- 
pose of his creatures as he pleases ? I do not affirm 
that justice means anything different with God from 
what it is with man. Whatever philosophy may 
say on the analogy between the human and the 
divine attributes, the believer in Scripture must 
consider the question settled, for " God made man 
in his own image." But the rights and obligations 
recognized among men grow out of the relations 
which men sustain to one another. To affirm that 
right and wrong between man and God are in all 
cases the same as right and wrong between man 
and man, is to affirm that the relations which sub- 
sist between man and his Maker are in all cases 
similar to those which subsist between man and his 
neighbour. The objections which are made to the 
doctrine of inspiration, on the score that certain 
passages in the Old Testament and certain doctrines 
in the New are incompatible with the character of 
God, are based on an attempt to narrow God to the 
limits of human relationship and bind him by the 
laws which govern human society. 

There are certain intuitive truths which underlie 
every process of reasoning and are the basis of all 
religious faith. Let us take the two which we 



110 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

have already mentioned as illustrations — the law 
of contradiction in logic and the distinction between 
right and wrong in ethics. If we cannot rely upon 
the validity of these primary beliefs, we cannot 
pursue any argument or receive any revelation. 
Clearly, then, it is the province of reason to decide 
whether the Bible as a w T hole, or in any of its parts, 
contradicts any of our primary beliefs ; and if it 
does, it is safe to say that the Bible, or a part of it, 
does not come from God. But we are not aware 
of any intuitive belief by which we can determine 
what is proper and what is not proper for God to 
do on every occasion ; what passages in the Bible 
have sufficient dignity to be assigned to divine au- 
thorship and what have not; what occasions are 
important enough for the manifestation of God's 
miraculous power and what are not. And men 
have pushed the exercise of their blind, erring intel- 
lect to an unwarranted extent when they have under- 
taken to say what God ought or ought not to do, 
and what his word ought or ought not to contain. 
When it is said that certain passages are too 
unimportant to be considered as inspired, it is fair 
to ask the objector if he can tell us what is the 
minimum of importance an inspired passage should 
possess. We confess to a lack in our mental con- 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. Ill 

stitution which incapacitates us from drawing a 
nice boundary line between the human and the 
divine, and prevent us from setting limits to the 
divine propriety. So with objections drawn from 
the style in which the books are written. The 
book of Job and the prophecies of Isaiah differ 
in style from the Acts of the Apostles and the 
Epistle to the Romans, but have we a right to say 
that one style is God's and the other man's ? What 
do we know of God's style f This is not the place 
for me to speak of the individuality of the writers. 
I shall do so in the next chapter. In the mean 
time, it is sufficient to protest against the criticism 
which resolves inspiration into a question of 
aesthetics. 




CHAPTER VII. 

EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 

IN recent discussions on the subject of inspira 
tion, prominence has been given to some questions 
which as yet have not been alluded to in these 
pages. A consideration of them will be necessary 
for the purpose of defining with greater strictness 
the doctrine of inspiration, and of answering ob- 
jections which arise out of a misapprehension of it. 

(1.) When it is claimed that the Scriptures are in- 
spired, it must be understood that we refer to the 
original manuscripts. 

This remark is necessary in view of the objec- 
tions which are based on the various readings of 
MSS. and our differences in translations. The books 
of the Bible as they came from the hands of their 
writers were infallible. The autographs were 
penned under divine guidance. It is not claimed 
that a perpetual miracle has preserved the sacred 
text from the errors of copyists. The inspired 

character of our Bible depends, of course, upon its 
112 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 113 

correspondence with the original inspired manu- 
scripts. These autographs are not in existence, and 
we must determine the correct text of Scripture in 
the same way that we determine the text of any 
of the ancient classics. 

We are not in possession of an autograph copy 
of the " iEneid " or the " Ars Poetica/' yet no one 
refuses to receive our editions of these poems as 
the genuine productions of Virgil and Horace. 
There is therefore no force in the objection against 
inspiration we are now considering, for just so far 
as our present Scripture text corresponds with the 
original documents is it inspired ; and so far as 
any translation is a faithful rendering of the orig- 
inal does it possess the authority of an inspired 
document. Have we a correct text? If we have 
not, then just in proportion to its incorrectness are 
we without the word of God. Are the various 
readings of sufficient importance to shake our faith 
in the genuineness of our Scripture text? Let us 
take the testimony of those who have investigated 
the subject. Says Professor Moses Stuart: "Out 
of some eight hundred thousand various readings 
of the Bible that have been collected, about seven 
hundred and ninety-five thousand are of about as 
much importance to the sense of the Greek and 



114 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

Hebrew Scriptures as the question in English 
orthography is, whether the word honour shall be 
spelled with a u or without it. Of the remainder, 
some change the sense of particular passages or 
expressions, or omit particular words or phrases ; 
but no one doctrine of religion is changed, not one 
precept is taken away, not one important fact is 
altered, by the whole of the various readings col- 
lectively taken/' Says Garbett: "Let every word 
affected by these variations be put on one side, not 
as certainly uninspired, but as not being certainly 
inspired, because it is not certainly identical with 
the original autographs. It will be quite enough 
if the verbal inspiration of all the rest be admitted. 
For this inspired portion, on which variation of 
reading has not thrown the shadow of a question, 
contains so entirely every expressive and emphatic 
word that the denial of inspiration to the remain- 
der becomes simply nugatory, if it be not ridic- 
ulous." * 

It may be said, " This admission materially 
weakens the argument. If you do not claim that 
the MSS. have been miraculously preserved from 
error in the transmission of them, why are you so 
strenuous in favour of a verbal inspiration? 
* God's Word Written, p. 342. 









EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 115 

What do you gain?" We gain all the difference 
there is between an inspired and an uninspired 
original. This difference is apparent. According 
to our view, an infallible autograph has been per- 
petuated by the industry of transcribers, and has 
been changed only in some unimportant details 
through the mistakes of copyists. According to 
the other view, similar changes have been incor- 
porated in a document faulty at the outset. On the 
one supposition, Paul wrote his Epistle to the Ro- 
mans under divine guidance, so that the doctrine 
of justification by faith is God's own commentary 
on the sacrifice of Christ ; on the other, the epistle 
contains only the expression of Paul's individual 
opinion, or is at best a human version of a divine 
revelation, and came from Paul's hands with the 
defects of a purely human authorship. 

(2.) Inspiration is not claimed for the writers of 
Scripture in a sphere outside of their official work. 

The infallible communication of God's message, 
whether oral or written, was the design of inspira- 
tion. In the discharge of their official duties the 
apostles and prophets acted under the unerring 
guidance of the Holy Ghost. No objection against 
inspiration can be drawn from the fallibility which 
the writers of Scripture exhibit in private life. 



116 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

Because God made the writers of Scripture infalli- 
ble as the official communicators of his will, it does 
not follow that he made them perfect as men. AVe 
have reason to suppose that the Christian experi- 
ence of the apostles was analogous to that of Chris- 
tians in our day. Paul spoke with confidence con- 
cerning his preaching, but with great humility 
concerning his personal attainments in holiness. 
The Psalms of David are the inspired liturgy of 
the Church, but David had no inspiration to keep 
him from sin. Paul was inspired to write his 
epistles, but the gift of infallibility did not extend 
to a knowledge of what should befall him at Jeru- 
salem. So we read that Peter "dissembled" at 
Antioch, and that there was a "sharp contention" 
between Paul and Barnabas. But these sins and 
failings with which the apostles were chargeable as 
private Christians should not be brought up as ob- 
jections to their inspiration when they were acting 
in their official capacity. It is urged that this view 
of the inspiration under which the sacred writers 
acted breaks up the unity of their lives by dividing 
them into inspired and uninspired portions. There 
is no force, however, in the objection if there is 
evidence for the fact. There is conclusive evidence 
that inspiration does not extend to all the actions 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE, 117 

of those who are the subjects of it, in that God has 
on more than one occasion made bad men the in- 
fallible communicators of his will. Balaam had no 
inspiration to keep him from sin, and yet,. wicked 
as he was, God made him infallible in the utterance 
of his prophecy. The fair inference from the teach- 
ing of Scripture is, that in their private life the sa- 
cred writers were under the ordinary influence of the 
Spirit of grace, and that they became the subjects 
of a specific influence the moment they opened 
their mouths to preach or took up their pens to 
write. So that their words, while in one sense their 
own, were also unequivocally God's. 

(3.) The specific agency of the Holy Ghost in ren- 
dering the sacred writers infallible in the communica- 
tion of truth must not be confounded with his sancti- 
fying influence on the hearts of all Christians. 

This mistake is commonly though inexcusably 
made, and arises from the fact that two specifically 
different operations of the Spirit are often called by 
the same name. Thus, in the communion service 
of the Church of England the prayer occurs, "that 
the thoughts of our hearts may be cleansed by the 
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so that we may per- 
fectly love God and worthily magnify his name." 
Mr. Maurice, after quoting this, adds : " Here are 



118 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

petitions which concern not a few specially religious 
men or some illuminated teachers, but all the mis- 
cellaneous people who are gathered together in a 
particular congregation. Are we paltering with 
words in a double sense? When we speak of in- 
spiration, do we mean inspiration ? When we refer 
to the inspiration of the Scriptures in our sermons, 
ought we to say, ' Brethren, we beseech you not to 
suppose that this inspiration at all resembles that 
for which you have been praying. They are ge- 
nerically, essentially unlike?'" 

Mr. Maurice has written a very able history of 
philosophy, and is one of the leading thinkers in 
England to-day. He must have known that it is 
no uncommon thing for the same name to be used 
in a different sense. He must be familiar with 
w T hat logicians call the fallacia equiuocationis. Dr. 
Arnold fell into the same mistake. He says : " It 
is no less an unwarrantable interpretation of the 
word inspiration to suppose that it is equivalent to 
a communication of the divine perfections. Surely, 
many of our words and many of our actions are 
spoken and done by the inspiration of God's Spirit, 
without whom we can do nothing acceptable to 
God. Yet does the Holy Ghost so inspire us as to 
communicate to us his own perfections? Are our 









EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE, 119 

best words or works free from sin ? All inspira- 
tion does not then destroy the human and fallible 
part in the nature which it inspires. It does not 
change men into God." * 

Mr. Maurice says, in his Essay on Inspiration, 
" I shall fix my thoughts on the word inspiration ; 
our disputes are emphatically about the word." 
The fallacy which underlies the writer's discussion 
of this subject is wrapped up in the sentence we 
have quoted. The controversy does not turn on 
the meaning of a word. The question is, whether 
the Bible is God's book or man's ; whether the sa- 
cred writers were infallibly secured against error, 
or whether their writings are chargeable with the 
defects of merely human authorship. If the doc- 
trine of an infallible rule of faith is proved, it 
makes little difference whether we call it inspira- 
tion or not. It is clear that the etymology of the 
word cannot settle the doctrine, but that the word 
must be defined by the doctrine which it is used to 
indicate. To illustrate: Human experience and 
the Bible teach that the sanctifying agency of the 
Spirit does not make man morally perfect. If, as 
in the Church of England Prayer-book, inspiration 
is the word used to express the sanctifying influ- 
* Quoted by Lee, p. 217. 



120 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

ence of the Spirit, then inspiration in this sense must 
be compatible with moral imperfections. Again, 
there is abundant evidence that the sacred writers, 
in the composition of Scripture, were made infalli- 
ble by the special influence of the Holy Ghost. To 
express this agency we use the word inspiration, 
and used in this sense inspiration is certainly in- 
compatible with error. It is just as idle to argue 
that the inspiration of the sacred writers did not 
render them infallible in the discharge of their offi- 
cial duties because the inspiration of private Chris- 
tians does not make them perfect, as it would be to 
argue on the other side that every Christian under 
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost is morally per- 
fect because infallibility is claimed on behalf of the 
writers of Scripture. How men of learning can be 
deceived by the ambiguous use of a word it is hard 
to imagine. 

(4.) Inspiration, though verbal, is not mechanical. 

It has been already shown that inspiration ex- 
tends to the words of Scripture. When we say 
that the Scriptures are verbally inspired, we mean 
nothing more than that the writers were influenced 
in their choice of words by the Holy Ghost. We 
do not pretend to say how this influence was ex- 
erted. We certainly do not mean to say that the 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 121 

words were dictated, or that the writers consciously 
acted as amanuenses. And yet there are those who 
seem to identify verbal inspiration with what is 
known as the mechanical theory. Thus Dr. Ban- 
nerman, in his very able work, says, " The theory 
of verbal inspiration, or the theory that human 
language was the medium through which the Holy 
Ghost both revealed truth to the prophet and em- 
powered him to record it with infallible accuracy, 
is one that probably is not open to the objection 
of being inconsistent with the exercise of the facul- 
ties of the writers according to their ordinary laws. 

.... Still, it is a theory The connection 

between human thought and human language is 
not of that invariable kind to justify us in saying 
that there can be no access to the mind except 
through words, and no channel by which it can be 
guided to an infallible expression of them except 
a verbal inspiration." Using the expression, ver- 
bal inspiration, as Dr. Bannerman does, I fully 
concur with what he says. We certainly have no 
evidence that words are the only channel of com- 
munication between the Infinite and the finite mind. 
There is another instance in which the meaning of 
the word must be defined by the doctrine which it 
is employed to indicate. The writers of Scripture 



122 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

communicated God's message infallibly in words. 
The expression verbal inspiration implies that the 
inspiration of the sacred Scriptures extended to 
the words of Scripture. It does not mean that 
words were the channel through which the Spirit 
gained access to the minds of the sacred writers. 
It does not imply that the sacred writers were 
machines, or that they were the mere transcribers 
of words, which were successively whispered in 
their ears. The theory of verbal inspiration does 
not refer to the process by which the matter of 
Scripture was communicated to the writers, but 
to the result of the Spirit's influence as seen in an 
infallible writing. How the words of Scripture 
originated in the minds of the writers we do not 
know, but that they are God's words we do know, 
and therefore we say that the Bible is verbally 
inspired. 

(5.) There is a difference between revelation and 
inspiration. 

The reality of this distinction is not questioned, 
but the difficulty in fixing a boundary line between 
revelation and inspiration has given rise to a con- 
troversy between the ablest defenders of the infal- 
libility of the Scriptures. A revelation is a super- 
natural communication of truth on the part of 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 123 

God. This definition is accurate enough for our 
present purpose : we shall have occasion after a 
little to employ one that is more discriminating. 
Now, the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, 
is full of recorded revelations which God from 
time to time made to his servants. The possession 
of a revelation, however, did not qualify a man for 
being the infallible instructor of others. He was 
liable to make mistakes and incorporate human 
errors in God's message. Hence, when God de- 
signed his communications to serve a public pur- 
pose, he not only gave revelations to his servants, 
but he rendered them infallible in communicating 
them through the influence of the Holy Spirit. 
Inspiration was the influence under which the 
sacred writers became infallible in the communi- 
cation of truth to their fellow-men. This definition, 
however, though true, is not complete, and is liable 
to the objection that it only provides against the 
possibility of error on the part of the sacred writ- 
ers, but does not give the character of divine 
authorship to their writings. It would be better 
to say that we understand the inspiration under 
which the Scriptures were written to mean that 
intimate relation between the Holy Spirit and the 
minds of the sacred writers in virtue of which we 



124 IXSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

are justified in saying that the words of Scripture 
are the words of God. It is clear, then, that reve- 
lation does not imply inspiration. Joseph was 
warned of God in a dream. He received a 
revelation, but was not inspired. But does inspir- 
ation imply revelation ? This has been a subject 
of discussion of late, particularly between Dr. Lee 
and Dr. Banner man. 

It is evident that in this controversy two very 
different questions have been confounded, to wit : 
(1.) The character in which the Bible addresses us } 
as the result of the labours of the sacred writers; 
and (2.) the manner in which the writers them- 
selves derived the information which is recorded 
in the pages of Scripture. The first is evidently 
in Dr. Bannerman's mind when he says : 

" It is somewhat startling to be told, not by the 
opponents, but by the friends of inspiration, that 
the Acts of the Apostles, and other such historical 
portions of the Bible, are no part of the revelation 
of God/' 

Again : " Had the prophets, or the evangelists, 
or the apostles the supernatural commission and 
gift of God to w T rite in his name? This is the 
question which, if answered in the affirmative, gives 
to all they wrote the character of revelation." 






EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 125 

Again : " If all the books, and all the parts of 
each book, uncorrupted and un mutilated, which 
are usually accounted to belong to the canon, have 
a right to their place there, it is impossible, with- 
out playing fast and loose with the evidence that 
accredits all alike, to deny to one portion the cha- 
racter of revelation while assigning it to the re- 
mainder." These remarks would have been just 
if, as Dr. Bannerman seems to have supposed, Dr. 
Lee had cast discredit upon the historical portions 
of the Scripture by denying their divine author- 
ship. He has been led into this line of reasoning 
by a misapprehension of the real questions at issue. 
If the question be put, Is the Bible a revelation 
to us from God ? we answer, " Yes — in all its 
parts" since the words of Scripture are the 
words of God. But if we are asked whether all 
the contents of the Bible are the records of super- 
natural communications objectively presented to 
the minds of the writers, it will not be so easy to 
give an affirmative answer. 

Let it be understood, then, that we are not now 
discussing the question whether the Bible comes to 
us in the character of a revelation from God. That 
is settled. The question is, whether there is such 
a difference in the way the sacred writers came into 



126 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

possession of the knowledge which they have em- 
bodied in the Scripture that we are justified in say- 
ing that in some cases they received their informa- 
tion by direct revelation from God, while in other 
cases they derived it from ordinary sources. In 
reply to this question, Dr. Lee answers yes ; Dr. 
Bannerrnan, no. 

It is of the first importance to determine, if pos- 
sible, the exact meaning of a revelation. In all the 
revelations recorded in Scripture their objective 
character is unmistakable. A palpable distinction 
is preserved between the revealer, the thing re- 
vealed and the person receiving the revelation. 
Noah was warned of the deluge. The revelation 
took the most definite shape : " God said unto 
Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me ; for 
the earth is filled with violence through them : and 
behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make 
thee an ark of gopher wood : rooms shalt thou 
make in the ark," etc. Gen. vi. 13. God talked 
with Abram when he gave him the covenant of 
promise: "After these things the word of the Lord 
came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, 
Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great 
reward. And he brought him forth abroad and 
said, Look now toward heaven and tell the stars, if 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 127 

thou be able to number them ; and he said unto 
him, So shall thy seed be." The same distinctness 
characterizes the revelation which Daniel records in 
the ninth chapter of his prophecy: "Yea, while I 
was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, 
whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, 
being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the 
time of the evening oblation, and he informed me 
and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now 
come forth to give thee skill and understanding. 
.... Know, therefore, that from the going forth 
of the commandment to restore and build Jerusa- 
lem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven 
weeks and threescore and two weeks ; the street 
shall be built again and the wall, even in troublous 
times." In the accounts which we have of the 
revelations given to Paul on his way to Damascus, 
and to Peter on the housetop at Joppa, the same 
sharp discrimination between the giver and the 
receiver of the communication is preserved. See 
Acts ix. 10. Turn finally to the account of the 
revelation given to John : " The revelation of Jesus 
Christ, which God gave unto him to show to his 
servants things that must shortly come to pass, and 
he sent and signified by his angel unto his servant 
John I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, 



128 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

and heard behind me a great voice as a trumpet. 
.... And when I saw him I fell at his feet as 
dead, and he laid his right hand upon me, saying, 
Fear not," e c. Rev. i. etc. 

The accounts we have cited are sufficient to afford 
material for an accurate definition of a revelation. 
In the Scripture sense of the term, a revelation 
means something more than that a conception has 
originated in the mind through divine agency; for 
not only in the cases cited was the matter of reve- 
lation a communication from God, but it was known 
to be so. The distinction between God communi- 
cating and the person receiving was as much a 
matter of consciousness as is the distinction between 
the object seen and the person seeing in an act of 
vision. If every thought which entered the mind 
of the sacred writers through divine influence is a 
revelation in the strict and proper sense of the 
word, there need be no hesitation in savins; that 
everything in the Bible was communicated to the 
' writers by special revelation. For whether they 
wrote history or doctrine — whether they searched 
records or made drafts on memory ; whether they 
made statements with the preface, " Thus saith the 
Lord," or wrote what was a matter of general 
knowledge — in every case their conceptions were 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 129 

shaped, their words chosen, their selections made 
under the infallible guidance of the Holy Ghost. 

But a revelation, as I have already said, means 
more than that a conception has originated in the 
mind through divine agency. It implies that truth 
has been objectively presented to the mind by dream, 
vision or audible voice, and that its reception has 
been attended with the consciousness that it came from 
God. Take, for example, the visions of Paul (Acts 
xvi. 9) which influenced him to go to Macedonia. 
How did he know that it was not a mere subjective 
state? And why did he feel bound to obey it? 
Simply because consciousness testified as clearly 
as to his own identity that he had been in direct 
communication with God. 

Now the question is, Have we evidence that 
everything whatever the sacred writers penned 
was a revelation in the sense defined? Do we know, 
for example, that Paul could say, "These facts, 
these doctrines, this line of argument, this meta- 
phor, these words which I have embodied in my 
epistle, were presented to my mind by direct com- 
munication from God, so that, in recording them, 
I am acting as his amanuensis, am reporting what 
God has said to me, am fixing on paper what God 
has made to pass before my mind" ? I do not ask 

9 



130 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 



whether the apostles wrote under divine influence — 
this question has been already answered — or whether 
they knew that they were inspired ; but have we evi- 
dence that they could always discriminate between 
the Holy Ghost as the communicator of truth 
and themselves as the recipients of it? Could they 
so objectify their conceptions as to be able to say, 
" These are revelations made to us by God" ? If 
any such evidence exist, I am ignorant of it, and 
therefore, using the word revelation in this restricted 
sense, I cannot take the position with Dr. Banner- 
man, that revelation is co-extensive with inspira- 
tion. That this statement may not be understood 
as casting the slightest discredit upon the divine 
authorship and infallibility of the smallest portion 
of the Scriptures, let me ask the reader to remem- 
ber the two senses in which the word revelation is 
used. Taking it in its wider sense, to express the 
idea that the Bible is a message to man from God 
for the guidance of life, we may say, with confidence, 
every part of it is a revelation. Taking it in its 
narrower sense, to express the objective communi- 
cation of truth by God to the sacred writers, we 
can only say that there is no evidence to warrant 
the assertion that everything incorporated in the 
Bible was first presented to the minds of the writers 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 131 

by means of revelations. Still, it is true that God 
may have presented the most familiar facts to the 
minds of the Scripture writers in a series of distinct 
revelations. We may think it is likely that he 
would do so, but, for aught we know, he may have 
done so. Everything recorded in the Acts may have 
been revealed to Luke as distinctly, as objectively, 
as the vision which Peter saw when on the house- 
top in Joppa. Scripture furnishes no material for 
a positive answer to the question under discussion. 
We cannot affirm with Dr. Bannerman that revela- 
tion is co-extensive with inspiration. And on the 
other hand, we cannot, with Dr. Lee, be confident 
that it is not. 

" But," says Dr. Bannerman, " without revelation 
in addition to inspiration, the utmost that can be 
said is, that the narrative is an infallible transcript 
or copy of the beliefs and knowledge of the writers, 
leaving it still an open question as to whether their 
beliefs and knowledge were true." Again : " The 
conception in the mind of the sacred penman, both 
of facts and truths, although recorded with infalli- 
ble accuracy as conceived, may yet not answer to the 
reality." 

If the office of inspiration is simply to enable 
the subjects of it to fix on paper their own concep- 



132 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

tions with infallible accuracy, these remarks are 
just. It would be rather a useless inspiration, and 
one not worthy, we may say with reverence, of the 
Holy Spirit, which consisted only in stereotyping 
human errors and imperfections. 

These remarks, however, are enough to show us 
at once the real point of difference between the two 
writers whose names have been so frequently men- 
tioned. Dr. Bannerman limits inspiration to the 
infallible expression of thoughts, either orally or 
on paper. The originating of them in the minds 
of men is, in his view, the office of revelation. 
He narrows the sphere of inspiration, and is there- 
fore led to widen the scope of revelation. Accord- 
ing to the view which I have taken in these pages, 
the shaping of the conception in the mind of the 
sacred writer and its infallible communication in 
words are included under the idea of inspiration. 
According to Dr. Bannerman, the latter is the 
exclusion. 

(6.) There is a human and a divine element in the 
Scriptures. 

These adjectives are not used to distinguish dif- 
ferent parts of the Bible. Nothing is implied in 
them disparaging to its plenary inspiration. It is 
throughout a divine and a human book. In the 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 133 

strictest sense of the term, God is its author. And 
yet this is not equivalent to saying that God 
adopts every sentiment found in its pages. 

The Bible is not written throughout in the form 
of a direct address from God to men. Portions 
are so written, and portions embody the sentiments 
of men, and sometimes of very wicked men. 
Plenary inspiration does not involve the idea that 
God is responsible for these sentiments. It is a 
guarantee that they have been correctly rendered, 
but not that they have the divine sanction. His- 
torians are not supposed to be in sympathy with 
all the wickedness they chronicle; and because 
God enabled his servants to transcribe with infalli- 
ble accuracy the wicked and even blasphemous 
speeches of men, it does not follow that he endorses 
sin. Notice, too, the difference between the senti- 
ments of inspired men, and an inspired account of 
the sentiments of men uninspired. Paul's judg- 
ment in reference to the question addressed to him 
by the Corinthians was infallible, because it was an 
inspired judgment. Job's friends, on the contrary, 
were not inspired, and though the writer of the 
book has given us an inspired account of what they 
said, their speeches do not on that account carry 
with them the divine approval. Coleridge there- 



134 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

fore clearly misapprehended the nature of inspira- 
tion when he objected to the inspired character of 
the book of Job, because sentiments are therein 
expressed which are incompatible with the moral 
nature of God. 

Again : the Bible is a human book. That is to 
say, it was written by men in human language. 
The sacred writers were not machines — were not 
mere amanuenses. Inspiration did not abridge 
their freedom or destroy their individuality. They 
were, in every sense of the word, authors. Differ- 
ences of education, of character, of surrounding 
circumstances on the part of the several writers, 
give colouring to their books. " Where the pro- 
phet has been of the sacerdotal race, the various 
features of the theocracy — the temple and the al- 
tar, the ark and the cherubim — float before his 
view, as in the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 
The shepherd Amos still wanders in the pastures 
— his imagination still lingers with the flocks, 
and dwells on the culture of his fields — his simil- 
itudes are taken from the mildew which blights 
the vineyard or the lion which invades the 
fold." * 

There is no difficulty in conceiving that the 
*Lee on Inspiration, p. 173. 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 135 

writers of Scripture reasoned, exercised memory, 
availed themselves even of existing documents, 
were free in the use of their faculties, while at the 
same time they were infallibly guided in the words 
they used by the Holy Ghost. 

Let it be granted that inspiration did not de- 
stroy individuality, let it be admitted the sacred 
writers were truly the authors of the books they 
wrote, and we shall have no difficulty in account- 
ing for variations in the accounts of the same 
event. Dean Alford finds an objection to the 
plenary inspiration of the Gospels in the different 
accounts of the inscription on the cross. Is it 
likely that four men relating the same event would 
use precisely the same language, or, reporting what 
had been said in their hearing, would do so with- 
out the omission, addition or change of a word ? 
If in a court of justice four witnesses should give 
their testimony in precisely the same language, 
would the fact not afford a strong evidence of 
collusion. And is not diversity of statement within 
certain limits rather corroboration of truth than 
otherwise ? 

By placing the several statements of the evan- 
gelists side by side, we shall find that they are not 
contradictory, but that they differ only as they 



136 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

omit one or more of the words constituting the 
inscription. Thus : 

The King of the Jews. — Mark. 

This is the King of the Jews. — Luke. 

This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. — Matthew. 

Jesus of Xazareili, the King of the Jews. — John. 

It was possible for the Spirit so to have influ- 
enced the evangelists that they should have reported 
these inscriptions verbatim. It was possible for the 
biographers of Christ, guided by inspiration, not to 
have varied a hair's breadth in their statements. 
But there are reasons which make it important that 
the individuality of the sacred writers should be 
preserved. 

Suppose the whole Bible were in the form of a 
communication made by God to one man, and 
written by him with the preface, a Thus saith the 
Lord/' how could we prove that its claims were 
valid ? We should want the evidence of prophecy 
and its recorded fulfilment; we should miss the 
argument from the unity of design which we now 
have in a series of documents written by men who 
lived ages apart; we should be without the con- 
firmatory testimony of One who wrought miracles 
in attestation of his divine commission. In short, 
we should be without the evidences which go to 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 137 

prove the divine authority of the Scriptures. The 
form which the Bible now possesses, it will not be 
rash to say, is essential. It is, among other rea- 
sons, because it comes to us as a series of tracts 
written by different men, yet pervaded by an un- 
mistakable unity ; it is because these tracts are so 
corroborative of each other that we are irresistibly 
led to a recognition of their historical value and 
divine authority. As has already been remarked, 
the Bible comes into the hands of the student as a 
series of literary documents. It must be judged as 
a human book. It cannot escape critical handling. 
It must be able to stand the ordeal of historical 
criticism before it can receive the homage of men 
as a divine revelation. Did Christ rise from the 
dead ? We wish testimony to that effect— the in- 
dependent testimony of those who saw him after 
his triumph over the grave — of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke and John. 

Now it undoubtedly strengthens our faith in the 
evangelists — judging them as ordinary historians — ■ 
to find in their pages essential agreement with cir- 
cumstantial variety. In an evidential point of view 
it was a matter of great importance that the indi- 
viduality of the writers of Scripture should be pre- 
served, in order that the Bible might carry with it 



138 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

the unvarnished testimony of independent witnesses 
to the cardinal facts of the gospel. How much cor- 
roborative evidence concerning the life of Christ 
would be wanting if the four Gospels had been cast 
in one mould ? 

The Bible was written by men, and all that is 
ordinarily implied in human authorship (save falli- 
bility) may be fairly ascribed to the sacred writers. 
The Bible was penned under the direct influence 
of the Holy Spirit, so that infallibility attaches to 
every word. 

These two statements, placed side by side, consti- 
tute the sum of our knowledge concerning the com- 
position of the Scriptures. We need not attempt 
to make a theory to explain how the human and 
the divine unite in the composition of the Scrip- 
tures. We do not know how the human and the 
divine unite in the person of Christ ; we can only 
state the fact that Christ is " God and man in two 
distinct natures, and one person for ever." We do 
not know how the human and the divine unite in 
the process of sanctification. We know that a union 
of some kind is implied in Paul's address to the 
Philippians, " Work out your own salvation with 
fear and trembling, for it is God who worketh in 
you to will and to do of his good pleasure." 



EXPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 139 

The conclusion we reach on the subject which 
has been discussed in these pages is admirably ex- 
pressed in the words of two recent writers. Says 
Westcott : * " We have a Bible competent to calm 
our doubts and speak to our weakness. It is au- 
thoritative, for it is the voice of God ; it is intelli- 
gible, for it is in the language of men. " Says Gar- 
bett : f " While the words of Scripture are truly 
and characteristically the words of men, they are 
at the same time fully and concurrently the words 
of God." 

* Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 33. 
f God's Word Written, p. 293. 



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